Our brilliant Under-17 Track and Field athletes have secured top spots in the inaugral Scottish National Athletic League (SNAL). The four match series, which has been running over the summer months, completed on Sunday 30th July at Grangemouth. The points accumulated across each match have been totalled and our boys have been declared the U17 Mens winner with our girls secured second place in the U17 Womens competition.
SNAL is the new League that combines the old Men’s, Women’s and Junior League into a single match-day. An innovative approach meant that each event was run in “open-graded style”, with heats seeded on ability, rather than age group. This was to maximise the competition in each event. Points are then awarded in age group categories. For example, an u17W might have finished fourth in heat 1 (fastest seeds) of the 100m, but as fastest U17W overall, she would have gained maximum points in the U17W competition.
Our U20s were not that far behind in their League positions with the U20M in fifth place and U20W in fourth place. The Senior men finished 10th and the Senior Women 14th. As with all Athletic Leagues, the key to success is a combination of great individual results along with broad participation across all the events. Our U17s did both spectacularly well. Our u20s and Seniors had a number of great individual performances but lacked the depth of participation of our U17s table-toppers. The call to action for 2024 is already out there – more spikes/throwing shoes on the track, runways and throwing pits will see an even greater result across all the age groups next year.
As well as applauding our athletes, we should also recognise the work of our Jumps, Throws, Hurdles, Middle-Distance and Sprints coaches who prepared our athletes for the leagues matches, our officials and parent volunteers who measured, timed, analysed and marshalled the athletes and finally our parents and loved ones who contributed to transport and moral support.
The picture (curtesy of Dudley Walker) shows Jamie Connor and Jack Wallace bring home the 1500m points for the U17M at Match 4.
Full individual performances can be viewed at aaacresults.com and match points with final league positions can be seen in the attached document.
Looking forward to next season’s SNAL already!
Many many thanks to Team Manager Gerry Duggan for this full report from a great days work at Grangemouth for our U17/U20 Athletes
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