Leagues - Men's and Women's

The club's progress in the various track and field leagues, like that of any club, goes in cycles. One of the real high points for the club was the period from about 1987 to 1997. The Women's League set up had complete teams consisting of Under 13's, Under 15's Under 17's, Under 20's and Seniors. It was a better ste up than the Men's Leagues where the Senior Men's League met separately from the Young Athletes League and there was no direct progression to the Senior ranks. Infact many good athletes in all clubs disappeared at the point where they were expected to mae the transition. As far as the Women's League team was concerned, the spirit was first class. At the bottom end there were many highly ranked Under 13's and Under 15's with such as Kezban Acar (her father was Turkish), Nadia Hashemi (Egyptian parentage), Julie Bain and Heather Gibson while at the Senior end all the women took part - Shelagh King did the 400 metres hurdles regularly (on one occasion she ran the Ben Nevis n the Saturday and did the league on the Sunday), Marjorie Small, Hylda Stewart and company were always there. The two real stars were Lynn Hardware and Ann Murray however who were always big points winners in the Senior events. They competed until there were several key departures which made continuation very difficult - Nadia went to live in Leeds, Kezban also moved, Hylday was a hotel manager and her work took her away and so on. I'll do a separate blog about them some time soon.
The men and boys had a real fight on their hands at this point due to the short lived but genuine rivalry with Clydebank AC. The Senior Men climbed from 27th or 28th in Scotland in 1986 to 7th in 1994 (VPAAC were in the teens) and many were Scottish internationalists - field events athletes like Lachie Carter (hammer and shot), Craig McDaid (long jump and sprints), Tommy Carlin (javelin) brought great honour to the club. As for the young athletes - well they did us proud. The lowest point was 1986 when with a team of three Under 13's, two Under 15's and one Under 17 we were sixth of seven teams in the YAL. Despite a lot of pressure Lachie Carter, who was the sole Under 17, refused to leave and helped build that team and then the senior team. Progression was good however and by 1989 we used 18 Under 13's, 17 Under 15's and 14 Under 17's. Remarkable progression. It should be pointed out that we had our own training venue in Clydebank at the time and everybody helped out. I'll come back to this one soon and see what we can learn for next year when we have our own track in Clydebank once more.