Scottish School Track & Field Championships big success for young Harriers

The last 2 weeks have been a busy schedule  for our youngsters starting with the West District, numerous Sports days across the county, East Ayrshire Schools, Youth Development League and Ayrshire Schools Track & Field Championships. The climax of this busy May / June fixture list is always the Scottish Schools Championships, where the best youngster from all over Scotland compete. The Scottish Schools is held over two weekends, with the first series of events are the combined events. Last weekend were the combined events held at Grangemouth stadium, where pupil Evie Bartl, S1 from Grange Academy, achieved already a bronze medal. This weekend saw the individual track & field events, which were held at the same venue over two days, Friday and Saturday. The athletes could not have asked for better conditions with blue sky and summer like temperature, which meant that sun cream was as essential as spikes shoes.

First to climb onto the podium on Friday morning 7th June was 12 year old Evie Bartl, who won her shot put event girls D comfortably with her first action of the competition. A throw of 9.31 m would have been already good enough to win the competition but Evie’s second throw with 9.41 m even extended her lead, 30 cm in front of second place.

Cara Baillie, now S2 Glasgow School of Sports, threw 7.37 m in the shot put for 9th place and competed a little later also in the high jump where she cleared 1.40 in her second attempt, which placed her 7th overall.

Lorne Kerr, girls A Loudon Academy, run in the 100m and achieved 13.84 in her heat, which was unfortunately not fast enough to proceed to the next round.

Roy Shankland, Cumnock Academy, was then later in action in the 400 m event where he clocked 53.56 in his heat, enough to qualify comfortably and saving his energy for the final, which he won by a big margin in 50.12 seconds. Roy was over 1 1/2 second faster than the second placed athlete.

Cameron Wilson, Loudon Academy had earlier qualified for the 200 m final after coming second in his heat with a time of 25.88 but improved in the final with a fine time of 24.83, which earned him the silver medal.

Evie Bartl and Cara Baillie kick started day two of the championships with the 75 m hurdle race girls D. Cara Baillie clocked 14. 36 in her heat, which was unfortunately not fast enough to proceed to the next round. Evie qualified from her heat as fastest loser, coming third running a new PB of 12.89. Although Evie finished only 6th in the final she was very pleased running another fine PB of 12.59 and beating the girl, who denied her the gold medal at the West District.

Evie then moved on to her favourite event the javelin, which started with a bit of drama as Evie had a shaky start. Although her warm up throw was probably around 26 m her first official throw went slightly wrong landing at 18.81 m, a distance Evie can almost achieve with a standing throw. However, after a slight panic Evie gained quickly her composure again and her second throw of 24.55 m would have  already won the competition.

Evie then went on with an excellent sequence of further good throws, steadily increasing her lead with a couple of throws over 25 m and leaving her best for the last throw, achieving a new PB of 26.97 m.

Next Harrier to make it onto the podium again was Cameron Wilson who competed for the first time in the 400 m hurdle event , an event I believe he had not tried out before and with only limited hurdling practice. However, Cameron excelled in this event and won the gold medal in a fine time of 66.29.

 

 

Roy Shankland completed the day with a fine bronze medal in the 200 m event boys A, clocking 23.68 in his heat and 22.64 in the final. Apologies if I missed to mention anyone but it was a hectic weekend, please pass on any missing details  so we can publish all results and I am sure Colin Young will have some good photos to show for as well.