The first stage of the Scottish Indoor Relay Championships took place at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow on Saturday 28 January 2023 with races for Under-13, Under-15, Under-17 and Senior categories.
Central AC’s teams showed some fine running and slick baton changes as four teams progressed to their finals. For the age group teams the goal was to earn a return to the Emirates Arena on 12 February to run at the relay finals.
The Under-17 Boys team of Dylan McCulloch, Lewis Miller, Jonah Whitby and Ken Young were drawn in the first heat against a strong Law and District team and challenged all the way to come home in second place in 1:37.01 minutes. With only the winner of each heat guaranteed a place in the final they had to wait and see if they had qualified as fastest losers. When heats 2 and 3 both finished with slower times the team knew they had qualified as second fastest team.
The Under-17 Girls team had some late team changes but the final line up of Loren Stewart, Niamh MacKinlay, Rowan Calveley and Tabitha MacKenzie managed to practice their baton changes during the warm up and entered the event with confidence. The team started well – Tabitha MacKenzie on the anchor leg received the baton in second place and with only one guaranteed place in the final had to work hard. She hung onto her opponent all the way round and dug in on the home straight to fight to the line lunging at the finish. The photo finish showed she had taken the win on the dip by just 0.09s to take the team through to the final in 1:52.48 minutes.
The Under-13 Boys team of Lewis Munro, Jack Campbell, Kyle McPake and Cameron McCallum also had to dig in to get through but with some excellent running from them all they managed to come third in their heat and claim the final fastest-loser spot in 2:07.01 minutes.
The Senior Women’s team Chloe Watt, Zosia Paddon, Amelie MacGregor and Megan Dunlop are all still school age but stood up well against older established athletes as they took the baton round in 1:54.60 minutes to get through to the final. The final for the seniors was run later the same day where they managed to place 6th and can be proud of being the first Central team ever to make a national senior indoor relay final.
Gaining experience at relays were the Under-13 and Under-15 Girls teams. The Under-13 team of Amy Drysdale, Maddie Peterkin, Eilidh Connor and Anwen Bowen raced round in 2:18.52 minutes and the Under-15 team of Ana McKie, Anna Gunn, Ella Tanner and Fia Watkin came home in 2:06.25 minutes.
More photos on the Central AC Facebook page.
Full results at http://www.janetnixon.info/scottish/2023/IndCERel3k/.