Pitreavie and Steve in the running for national awards
A PAIR of prizes could be heading for West Fife when the cream of track and field come together for an annual awards ceremony on Saturday.
Scottishathletics will host its 4J Studios Annual Awards in Glasgow, which will celebrate, recognise and acknowledge the achievements of individual competitors, clubs, coaches, officials and volunteers over the last 12 months.
Pitreavie AAC, and Fife AC coach Steve Doig, who works with Paralympic champion, Owen Miller, have been shortlisted in the 2022 honours, in the ‘Impact Club of the Year’ and ‘Para Performance Coach of the Year’ categories respectively.
Pitreavie, who last year were named as ‘Track and Field Club of the Year’, have been put forward, alongside Aberdeen AAC and Springburn Harriers, for the prize because of their efforts in offering athletics programmes to a wider range of youngsters.
Paul Allan, the club’s president, previously explained to Press Sport that their popular run, jump and throw initiative – a programme for 5-12 year olds to engage in the sport – has continued to grow and taken on the road as part of an outreach project.
The club also have a training group based in South Queensferry, as well as a masters training group, and work closely with Disability Sport Fife (DSF) to offer more for athletes with a disability.
Much of the growth of the run, jump and throw initiative has been harnessed by Kate Crawford, Pitreavie’s community athletics coordinator and coach, and a large number of volunteers.
“We’re one of the first clubs in the whole of Scotland that have got our own full-time employee, which is quite massive,” Paul said.
“That means, through Kate’s role as community coach, it gives us a chance to grow this further because she’s now got five days a week to work, as opposed to what happens when you only get a few hours here and there. It gives her a chance to work on its growth, as opposed to just the coaching.
“We’ve got all these people involved in the coaching; this helps put the plans in place to take it to the next levels again, and continue to grow. It’s huge being able to get the funding to be able to have her as a full-time employee.
“We’ve got a fantastic and creative bunch of volunteers that are always going to help. We’ve just got 20 more volunteers undertaking their level one courses to help with all the officiating of events, four on the jog leaders courses, so there’s a lot of people willing to get in and help, which is great.
“You need lots of people to be in there doing stuff, and that’s testament to the fact that we’ve got lots of really keen and active people helping the club strike these levels.
“It is fantastic. It’s a sport for everyone and we should be catering for everybody. It’s great.”
The latest nomination comes after a fine season on the track, which included club member, Nicole Yeargin, winning bronze medals in the 4x400 metres at the Commonwealth Games, the World Athletics Championships and the European Athletics Championships, over the course of the summer.
“When you get a medal in all three, I’m sure if you told her that was the outcome, she’d be pretty happy with it before she went into it all,” Paul added.
“This is probably the first full season we’ve had, officially, since lockdown so it’s been good.
“The club’s had a lot of good success around the various championships and good growth.”
Meanwhile Steve, who coached Owen on his way to T20, 1500m Paralympic gold in Tokyo last year, which saw him named as the 2021 scottishathletics Para Athlete of the Year, is in the running for Para Performance Coach of the Year alongside Rodger Harkins and Joyce Rammell.
As well as coaching Owen and at Fife AC, Steve runs a cross-club training group at the Pitreavie track, which includes another Paralympian, marathon runner Derek Rae, and Scotland 5,000m competitor, Annabel Simpson.