Leagues

Right now the club takes part in two leagues: the Scottish Young Athletes League in which we share athletes with West Dunbartonshire AAC and the Scottish Athletics League which is a Senior Men only league. It has not always been this way.

In the 1970's we had a team in the Young Athletes League ( a boys only set up) with Derek McGinley looking after the Under 13's, John Tonner the U15's and myself the U17's. We then joined the Men's League in 1985 and the Women's League in 1988. The difference was that the men had a rather abrupt gap at the end of the YAL where U17's had to move to a totally different men's team. They had no idea of the standards and some were a wee bit feart about making the jump to the big boys competition. The Women's League was a marvellous affair. Ther age groups went from Under 13 to Senior and the transition at U17 was seamless. The club did well in that league with senior road running women competing on the track with younger track specialists. Ask Ann Murray how successful the team was and how much fun it was!Unfortunately for various reasons (some of the athletes moved away - Nadia Hashemi to Leeds, Hylda Stewart's job changed and so on), the two main organisers, Agnes Gibson and Emily Hardware, left for family reasons and the team had to be withdrawn.

The situation now is that we have a men's team in their league and a young athletes team in their league. No women's league. Where do we go from here? The plan is to keep both these leagues going and add in the Central and South of Scotland League as Clydesdale Harriers. This has a limited number of events but has the virtue of including boys and girls, senior men and senior women at the same venue. The whole club will be represented. It also adds in four competitions to a shrinking season - ie no county championships and (apart from the U15 and U17 athletes) no district championships.

With coaching now available for all field events and recruiting being stepped up, the existing teams should start to progress again.