Odds and Ends

Last week the club had an email from USA asking for information from the 1920's for a former member of the club Robert Ross who is 105 years old. That makes him the oldest club member - he competed for the club from 1919 - 1921 before emigrating. That puts Willie Howie at 94 in second place and Jean McMillan (92) third.

On the coaching front, 17 year old Megan Reid has started helping out with Donald on Wednesday nights at the Kelvin Hall with a view to gaining the appropriate coaching qualification. It's good to see the younger athletes helping the even younger ones: it's part of a trend throughout Scottish athletics and one to be encouraged, I think. Many a young runner/jumper/thrower gives up when the pressure of school work gets too much for three or four days a week training and they (with whatever they have learned) are lost to the sport. This way the connection is maintained, they learn themselves by teaching others and they may well be back competing when the studying eases back.

Coaching is an interesting topic. It used to be that when you went to any club track, you would see groups of three or four young athletes talking with a Senior athlete. Coaching was a natural evolution. It was also the case that most coaches of whatever discipline had an endurance background: in the 90's the club coaches were BMcA for middle distance, Billy Hislop for sprints, Bobby Bell for throws and David Gibson for the Pole Vault - all had distance or middle distance backgrounds. It was the same at the national level with cross country runner Eddie Taylor of Shettleston being national coach for multi-events. I might come back to this soon.

There is a move to award LAP Trophies (two of them) for county cross country champions this year. The idea is that athletes are awarded points for where they finish in the District, National and County Cross Country Championships and the athlete with the highest points total, from whatever age group they come, wins the cup. It is one for Boys and one for Girls and all age groups except Senior and Veteran are eligible.

Brian McAusland and Johnathan Farrell were at the EACA Coaching weekend last Saturday and Sunday along with Duncan MacNeill, Bob Burness and Alan Craford of West Dunbarton and most groups were covered - endurance, sprints, jumps and combined events all had local representatives and it's hoped that the information will benefit local athletics.