Hundreds of track stars descend on Wishaw Sports Centre

May 13 2009 by Andrew Weston, Wishaw Press

Hundreds of track stars descend on Wishaw Sports Centre

YVONNE Murray has hailed the inaugural Scottish Inter-Regional Athletic’s Championships as an outstanding success.

Last weekend Wishaw Sports Centre hosted the event that showcased the best track and field talent from throughout the country.

The quality of the field participating in the Senior Regional Championships on Sunday was emphasised as 13 stadium records were broken.

Former Commonwealth Gold medallist Murray now finds herself working behind the scenes in the sport she loves as Senior Athletic Development and Events Officer at North Lanarkshire Leisure.

She told the Wishaw Press: “It was just great to see top-class athletics coming back to Wishaw.

“The staff at Wishaw Sports Centre were exceptional.

“They worked really hard and everything went really smoothly considering it was the first event for many years in Wishaw.”

More than 600 youngsters took part in the under-13-Superteams competition, the Scottish under-15 and under-17 championships on Saturday despite the wet conditions.

But this failed to dampen the enthusiasm of Law and District athletes who put in a terrific performance in the under-13 Superteams competition.

The Law & District AAC girls took bronze with the boys securing a silver.

“That just shows you the athletes in the area are doing exceptionally well,” Murray said.

“West Coast also won the senior championships on Sunday and athletes from North Lanarkshire were involved in the team which is great news. North Lanarkshire Leisure have invested a great deal of money in upgrading athletics equipment and that has been really vital.”

Wishaw Sports Centre is set to stage the event for the next two years in the build-up to the International Children’s Games which will be hosted by North Lanarkshire in 2011.

And Murray is determined to build on last weekend’s success and aims to get more high-profile events staged in Wishaw.

The 44-year-old said: “A lot of work went on behind the scenes and all credit to the staff at Wishaw Sport Centre who gave 100 per cent to make sure it all ran smoothly. Officials were happy and Scottish athletics were happy

“Hopefully it will mean we can stage even more events in the future. There is always room for improvement and we will have a debrief, discuss that with Scottish Athletics and see what we can introduce to make the event next year even better.”

Next month Murray will take charge of the Lanarkshire athletics team that will represent the county at the 2009 ICG in Athens.