Torrington Secondary Modern School’s winning team:

N Poole, M Kelland, C Jenkins, R Ball, A Smale, P Baker, P Reed and B Broad.

With two of their team finishing in the first three, Torrington Secondary Modern School, hosts to the competition this year, won the North Devon Schools cross-country championship on Monday.

First home was Alan Smale, who lives at Little Orchard, Goose Green, Torrington. Smale was the winner of his school’s second year pupils cross-country and on that occasion he put up a faster time than the winner of the senior event, Charles Jenkins, of Sunnycroft, Horns Cross, who finished third in the inter-schools event.

Ten schools competed and the eighty competitors were mass started by Mr R Mayo, sports master of Torrington Secondary Modern School. As the runners jostled together over the first hundred yards, three runners fell and Tony Marsh, the Bideford Grammar School cross-country winner, lost a shoe but, although he sacrificed a great deal of ground when he stopped to replace it, he finished 15th.

Final team placings were: Torrington Secondary Modern; Braunton SM; Bideford Grammar School; Barnstaple SM; Bideford SM; North Devon Technical School; Chulmleigh SM; Ilfracombe SM; Combe Martin SM; South Molton SM.

Article dated 29 March 1956