Saturday 18th July saw a somewhat blustery Grangemouth stadium, Scotland play host to this year’s School’s International Track & Field meeting for athletes born between Sept ’98 & Aug ’00. As a result of their performances at the Schools Interprovincial, two NDAC athletes were selected for the Irish squad that took on teams from England, Scotland & Wales.
Michael Gaffney (Campbell College) began the javelin with an impressive opening throw of 55.49m which put him in third position after the first round and improved slightly in the fourth round with a throw of 56.60m to set a new PB. He was still lying in bronze medal position going into the last round but was sadly pushed out of the medals during the final round to finish a very creditable fourth.
Aaron Sexton (Bangor Grammar), who was one of the youngest members of the Irish team, was taking part in his first schools international and found himself up against some stiff opposition in the 100m where the majority of the field had clocked sub 11sec. With the favourable following wind he was looking to run a similar time himself but unfortunately was unable to reproduce his recent good form, finishing in 7th with a modest time of 11.28sec. Later in the day he put his obvious disappointment behind him to run a strong third leg for the 4x100m relay team and handed over the batten in first position but, with only meters remaining, the Irish team were overtaken by a strong English quartet. Both teams beat the previous championship record with the Irish team setting a new national record of 41.68sec in the process and, despite missing out on gold by a mere 0.06sec, were delighted with their silver medals.
As far as the overall team competition was concerned, the English team proved too strong, finshing 1st (520.5 pts) with Ireland 2nd (358 pts), Wales 3rd (263.5 pts) & Scotland 4th (223 pts).