Club Awards 2016

by ColinPartridge · Published November 30, 2016 · Updated January 13, 2017

To close of this years AGM we continued the recent tradition of holding a short prize giving and awards ceremony. For those that were not present to receive their awards, we will hold a quick prize giving on Friday 2nd Dec, otherwise prizes will be sent out by post.

Cross Country Championships

First off, were prizes for the 2015/16 Club Cross Country Championships, where the winners were:

U11 Boys – Aiden McGinty
Sen Men – Max McNeil
M40 – Euan McInnes
M50 – Kenton Jones
U13 Girls – Nicole Dredge
Sen Women – Lana Turnbull
W40 – Edel Mooney
W50 – Saran Jones

This was followed by presenting a selection of awards for achievment and contirbution to the club over the past year. These winners were selected from nominations from coaches and club members.

Awards for Best Male and Female Athlete

Malcolm Lang
Shona Young

For the second year running Malcolm stood out from his team mates in competition, but also managed to improve his PBs across the board, from 5Km to the Marathon. Shona has also been a previous winner of this award and has had a fantastic year of acheivments in Ultra events. Some highlights include: Collecting 2 trophies at the recent Scottish Ultra Marathon Series Awards, , finishing 2nd in the Glasgow to Edinburgh Ultra (22min quicker than last year), Winning the Meadow’s Marathon.

Awards for Best Junior Athletes

Girls: Hannah Steel and Erin McComisky
Boys: Andrew Jackson

We had nominations for both Hannah and Erin, and being in different age groups and competing in different events, it proved difficult to select an overall winner. So we didn’t. Both Girls were amongst the most prolific of our young athletes, competing in numerous events throughout the tear. Erin saw from 60m through to 800m, and won her age group at the Scottish Schools Cross County, and Silver in the West Lothian Schools Track 800m. Hannah also improved her PBs, and was chosen to run on the FVL Presidents Select match for the 4th year running where she improved her 1500m PB to 2:37:1. Hannah also ran well at the cross country and had successes in various highland games. Both girls were also noted for their positive attitude to training and competition. On the whole, the boys were a lot less active over the year than our Girls, which probably made it more difficult to pick someone out based on their acheivements. It was fairly close run, but on the whole it was felt that the stand oput peformances came from U17 Andrew Jackson. Andrew had some high placed finishes and managhed tom improve his PBs in bpth the 100m and 200m.

Most Improved Athlete(s)

Lana Turnbull
Alan Knowles

This a was another award that where we felt the candidates were too difficult to separate. Alan had some notable results, taking roughly 4 minutes off of his 10Km PB, and around 10 off of his half marathon PB. While Lana showed a concistent improvement across the board, with notable 10km and 5km PBs, and some great performances in the cross country. In both cases it was clear that this improvement was the result of didication and hard work in training. Alan was keen to point out that he felt the Tue and Thu night training sessions led by Owen Williams played a big part in his improvement.

Awards for Endevour

Finally we had some awards for which the criteria was a little more open. Essentially these awards went to poeple who it was felt were worthy of recognition in areas such as: commitment, endevour, attitude, or just plain old approachability.

Scott Nelson
Neal Graham
Erin Steel*
Robyn Macdonald*

Scott was nominated in recognition of the determination he’s showed in getting back to good form after a long struggle due to injury. We also thank Scott for his contribution as a coach on Friday’s. Neal was nominated in recognition of his commitment to training for and acheiving PBs in both the Marathon and Half Marathon this year, but also due to his friendly and approachable character, he is generally felt to be a great asset to the club.

*Finally Erin and Robyn were recognised for their commitment and endevour in training and competition. Both girls were prolific in competition, representing the club in a wide variety and large number of races. And both girls were among the most dedicated juniors with a great attitude to training. (I’d also like to personally thank Erin for her uncomplaining assitance with tents and gear at several cross country events – Colin P). These last two awards were not announced at the AGM, for which we apologies to the girls (better late than never I hope).

Club Championships

The final presentations fo the night were for this year’s Club Championships Grand Prix.