User:Rossd84/Larkhall YMCA Harriers

Larkhall YMCA Harriers are an athletics club based in Larkhall, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The club formed in September 1931. The club's vest comprises of a main body of red with two white hoops.

Origins
The YMCA was first located in the town in the rooms above where Semi Chem is located in Union Street today, having been established there in 1897. In the early 1900s the organisation moved to Caledonian Road after buying the land between King Street and the Police Station boundary wall from the Caledonian Railway Company. Shortly after the Great War the YMCA sold the building which it had built on this land to two local businessmen who were also YMCA members; they in turn sold it to the Royal Mail who used it as Larkhall's main post office until the late 1970's. The YMCA moved into barracks that were purchased cheaply from the Army and then erected on the current site. By the 1960s these buildings were in a very poor condition, therefore the YMCA embarked on the fund raising and construction project that produced the modern building, which was completed in 1967. Today this building is starting to show its age, and the present membership has recently embarked on a maintenance and repair programme with the aim of prolonging its useful lifespan.

The YMCA Harriers' Club came into being as follows. Firstly there was a rambling group that was very active in the town in the 1920s, and this was to prove a useful recruiting ground for the Harriers. Secondly, by 1930 the YMCA had an indoor athletic section, and that summer the Lanarkshire Association of YMCAs held its Sports Day at Larkhall. Thirdly informal committee meetings and AGMs were being held from 1930; we know this because they are referred to in the formal minutes book which dates from April 1933. The stage was set for someone to harness this disparate athletic type activity, and this someone was John C. Scott, an official at Hamilton Harriers. Under his guiding influence, which was remembered by club members more than twenty years later, Larkhall YMCA Harriers formally came into being in September 1931.

1930's
The first pack run was held on October 1931, and the first written records for the club that still survive are dated November 1931. Interestingly, in the Hamilton Advertiser article that heralds the start of the club, (dated October 1931) the correspondent recalls the previous Harriers Club which existed in the town before the Great War. Although it had no connection to the newly formed YMCA club, its members did perform with distinction during the Edwardian era - especially in 1903 when the club won the Midland Districts Men's Cross Country Championship team title and "reigned supreme in the west". Irrespective of the exact nature of its formation in 1930, over the ensuing 75 years the Harriers' Club has offered a healthy outlet for successive generations of youngsters from Larkhall and the surrounding area. The club has been particularly effective in promoting the social and physical ethos of the YMCA. Moreover its members have, over the years, become increasingly involved in maintaining the YMCA's presence in the town, to the extent that today the club and the YMCA are virtually synonymous in peoples' minds. Club members have performed with distinction at district, inter - district, Scottish, British and International level at various times in the club's history, with these performances in turn being rewarded by selection for inter district squads, Scottish Schools squads, Scottish YMCA squads, Scottish squads, and British squads. Membership peaked in the 1980s with approximately 80 people on the books. Presently that number varies between 40 to 50.

Within a few years if its foundation the club had established races and training routines that would be clearly recognisable to today's members. For example, by 1932 the club was staging a Xmas Novelty road race not only using the handicap and prize giving format still employed to this day, but also running it over much the same course. Moreover by the summer of 1933 track scratch and handicap championships were being staged, again establishing a tradition that continues in the club today. Indeed that year they used an interesting programme, whereby one week they would hold a scratch competition for a given distance, and the next hold its handicap equivalent. This format meant that the combined competitions ran on for the best part of three months - and this method was experimented with again in the 1980's for the scratch championships. Latterly however it was felt that a good deal of the excitement and passion that can be aroused by holding the track championships in a short space of time was lost when employing this format, therefore we changed back to the normal practice of holding them during a 2/3 week window in late August/early September. Pack runs were traditionally held on Saturday afternoons; a common practice for Harriers Clubs throughout Scotland, and these runs often involved invitations to and from other local clubs such as Hamilton Harriers and Motherwell Harriers. Going hand in hand with these sessions was the Opening Run, held over a mixture of roads and cross country, and which was usually held in September. Both of these traditions survived in our club until the 1980's thanks largely to the efforts of A.B. Perrie, J. Mowbray, and R. Campbell. For many years this trio were virtually a Saturday afternoon institution in the town, when they could be seen pounding the streets and local countryside roads and lanes. Alex died in 1999, but John and Richard are very much alive and kicking, although their road running has now been replaced by regular walking. Finally, the practice of training on a Tuesday and Thursday evenings was also first established in the decade leading up to the start of the Second World War.

Out with the club, members attended the big athletics events of the time. These included the Novice Cross Country Championships, held generally in November each year, the YMCA Cross Country Championships, held the following month, the Midland District CC Championships usually held in January or February each year, and the National Cross Country Championships which were usually staged in February or March. Again, following a pattern which lasts to the present day, the club's support for these events was sporadic; occasionally a full team would turn out, but more often than not entries were done on a talented individual basis. Although there were track events held throughout central Scotland each summer, the club's main focus was on the winter programme that ran from September through to March each year. The club first took part in the Scottish YMCA CC Championships in December 1932 at Thornliebank. This was the eleventh annual staging of this event and J.B. Peat from Larkhall was fifteenth in the individual race, with the team finishing eighth overall. At the 1936 championships S.C. Gebbie from Larkhall finished tenth, recording the first top ten finish by a club athlete at a major race out with the club, whilst the club were runners up for the team title. These championships were held at Larkhall for the first time the following year on December 18, when the club took full advantage of home ground status by winning the team event for the first time in its short history - the counting team members were J. Gebbie (3), J. McMillan (4), W. Perrie(5), and T. Wedlock(6). In the late 1930s Tom was one of our premier performers, carrying on his fine form in this event through to the BUSF Cross Country Championships held at Liverpool in February 1938, where he finished in ninth place whilst representing Glasgow University Hares and Hounds.

1940's to late 1960's
The period 1939 - 45 was a tough one for the club, where the major aim of those members who survive, the call up for the war effort was simply keeping the club in being. From 1939 to 1942 most club and inter club competition was suspended in deference to the titanic events that were unfolding on the world stage. However from September 1942 onwards there was a steady return to something akin to the race programme that had first been established back in the 1930s. Inter club pack runs and competition, plus events involving the armed forces became increasingly commonplace in the latter war years, and this almost certainly reflects the growing belief in the nation at large that, although it was a long and costly struggle, we would be ultimately victorious. From 1945 to 1950 the club not only slowly recovered much of the character and content that was a feature of the pre war years, but also looked to broaden its appeal. The club's correspondent Fleetfoot (Jimmy MacFarlane) made a welcome return to the sports pages of the Hamilton Advertiser, although his articles weren't as prolific as those which appeared from 1931 to 1939. The Ballot Team Races, that were held twice a year, usually in March and December, used the Fairholm Trail for the first time in 1944. August 1949 saw the founding of the first Ladies Section following the receipt of an application for membership from a Miss R. Callen from Lesmahagow. This section had died out by 1952, however it was resurrected in various forms in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was an issue which challenged successive generations of male harriers until it was finally resolved in the mid 1980s, when the decision was taken to make the club a fully mixed one. Finally 1948 saw the arrival in the club of David Keir Gracie who, within four short years, was to transform the profile of the club in the Scottish athletics community.

Davie, the club's most distinguished member (born January 1927), represented Britain in the 400m hurdles at the 1952 Olympics held in Helsinki. He just missed out on making the final when he finished fourth in his semi final, being given the same time as the man who finished third. Only 6 athletes progressed to the final, and indeed his fourth place time was better than that of the second place athlete in the other semi final. Shortly after the Olympics, he equalled the twenty year old UK 400m hurdles record of 52.3 seconds. His time stood as the Scottish record for 18 years, and even today - more than 50 years after it was set - it still stands at number 16 in the Scottish all time rankings. In 1953 he won the World University Games 400m Hurdles title in Dortmund, Germany. Straddling his great years of '52 and '53, he was four times SAAA Champion from 1951 to 1954, and in the same period he was also a four times AAA finalist. He came closest to winning the latter event when he finished third in 1954, only 0.3 of a second behind the winner Harry Kane. However this performance was not considered good enough by the SAAAs to merit selection for that year's Empire Games which were held in Vancouver, Canada - a decision which was noted with regret in the President's Report at the 1955 Club AGM. To this day both his 400m flat and 400m hurdles times are club records; the former has been threatened on a few occasions over the years, but the latter has remained out of sight.

Davie's achievements, although comfortably the greatest in the club's history, aren't the only ones of merit recorded in the 1950's. For most of that decade Thomas Dempster Reid set new standards in many of the club's road and cross country races. In February 1951 "Dem" was part of the team that won the Scottish YMCA Cross Country Senior Men's Team title for only the second time in the club's history - a performance that earned both him and D. Brown places in the Scottish team for that year's British YMCA CC Championships. Four years later, in March 1955, “Dem” and John Stevenson formed part of the Scottish YMCA team that won the British title in Manchester, with "Dem" finishing in a magnificent second place and John a highly creditable fourteenth. Indeed the latter was also a top class athlete who, in the season 1951/52, became the first club athlete to make a big impact at Youth level. That winter he won the Youth titles at the Lanarkshire, Midland District and Scottish YMCA Cross Country Championships. Strongly fancied to complete a clean sweep by lifting the national cross country title being contested at Hamilton Race Course that year, he was stricken by a cold in the week prior to the race which restricted him to finishing fourteenth. That was a cruel blow for John, and the club had to wait for more than twenty years before a member at last won an open cross country title at national level. Unfortunately the club record books for those years are long since lost, therefore the impact that TD Reid and J. Stevenson made in the 1950s has largely been forgotten until now. "Dem" died a few years ago, but John is still alive - although his eyesight is now failing - and stays down in Ayrshire. Hopefully this account will go some way to recognising the importance of their performances in the club's history.

Jimmy MacFarlane (aka Fleetfoot), one of the club's longest serving members, died in 1956. His participation in and service to the club in many different capacities stretched back more than 20 years, therefore his contemporaries decided to set up a road race in his memory and purchase a memorial trophy that would be presented annually to the winner. The race was first held in April 1957 with G Leggate being the - surprise - inaugural winner. The race is still being held today each year over the same Canderside Toll course, with the winner's name and time being inscribed on the magnificent trophy. Back in 1957 the trophy cost nearly £30.00, which was a lot of money at the time, and the quality of it makes it undoubtedly the premier trophy to win in club competition to this day. By 1960 three out of the four road races that today make up the club's Road Race Championship were firmly established in the calendar. These were (a) the Xmas Novelty, (b) the Fairholm Ballot, and (c) the MacFarlane. Indeed, as mentioned earlier the Ballot Team Race was staged twice a year, and at some point in the 1 960s the December version of these races was moved to October, employing what came to be known as the Turnip course. The format for the Turnip Road Race (whose name emanates from the occasion when A.B. Perrie completed his leg of the relay carrying some turnips which had fallen of the back of a farmer's trailer!) consists of a three man relay over a 3.25 mile circuit that starts and finishes just over the Millheugh bridge on the back road to Stonehouse.

The successes of club members throughout the 1950s were largely down to the work of Tom Smillie, whose enthusiasm; knowledge and experience were key factors in the period 1943 - 56. Indeed, as has often been the case before and after Tom's era, the key individuals who have kept the club going throughout it's history frequently multiskilled - doing so long before the term was coined by management theorists! Tom emigrated to Australia in early 1957, with his long and fruitful association with the club being duly recognised at a farewell dinner dance held at the Grange Hotel in Hamilton. During the 1960s and 1970s club training became even more organized and structured - this revolution being largely the work of A.B. Perrie, who read widely and attended many coaching courses over this period. He studied the writings of the great coaches of the time (e.g. Lydiard, Cerruty) and adopted many of their principles into his training routines for the club athletes. Although the records for this period are also lost, we know that the standard in track performances in events from 800 metres upwards, as well as the road and cross country performances in general, rose to such an extent that for the first time ever club athletes on a regular basis competed at or near to Scottish "open" class in middle and long distance races. In 1960 W Morrison won the Scottish AAA half mile title (to this day he and D.K. Gracie remain the only club athletes to have won a SAAA Senior individual title) and the following year he won a Scottish track vest. At the 1963 national cross country championships B. McRoberts finished in thirtieth place in the senior race and this was probably the best ever finish by a club athlete up to that time in this event. Indeed during the 1960s we had six athletes running under two minutes for the 880 yards in the club at the same time. The fastest of these runners was D. McBain who, nearly forty years ago, was running close to 1m.50s on cinder tracks. At the other end of the spectrum was the great performance of the Under 20s Men's team when winning the open national cross country title at Ayr Race Course in February 1970. The team that day consisted of William and lan Bums, Jim Sorbie, Douglas McBain, Jim Gilfillan, Charles Morrow, Keith Whitefield and Andrew Sandilands. W. Burns' individual performance at Ayr also earned him a place in the Scottish team that competed in the annual International Cross Country Championships held the following month in France. This remains the greatest team performance in the club's history.

1970's to 1980's
By the early 1970s Jimmy McCluckie had emerged as the club's premier performer over roads and cross country and he was probably the first, and so far the only, man to hold the records for all four of our road races at the same time. Jimmy ran at the very top level as a Youth and Junior, although he didn't win a full Scottish vest - but it should be remembered the competition on the Scottish scene was exceptional at this time. Due to the loss of the relevant record books, the only concrete evidence of the calibre of his running that remains are his winning times inscribed on the MacFarlane Trophy. In 1973 Jim Egan (born 1960) started coming about the club and from the very beginning it was obvious that he was an exceptional talent. Indeed I was one of the many club members over the next thirteen years to feel the heat generated in the wake of his many great performances both within and out with the club! In the period 1982 - 85 he set club records on the track and road that stand to this day, including marvellous times for the Xmas Novelty and MacFarlane Trophy Road Races: indeed it was only an exceptional performance by D. Leitch in the Turnip Relay Road Race that prevents Jim from holding all of road race records. Oddly enough his greatest performances came exactly 10 years apart: in February 1974 he won the Under 13 Boys National Cross Country title at Coatbridge, (he remains the only club member to win an "open" national cross country title) and in February 1984 he finished fifth in the Scottish Senior Men's Cross Country Championship at Irvine. This phenomenal performance, achieved in a race of both great quality and quantity, is not only the best ever placing by a club athlete in this event at these championships, but also gained him selection for the Scottish team that ran in the World Cross Country Championships the following month in New York, where he performed creditably in a very high calibre race. Without doubt Jim is the second greatest athlete in the club's history, with only the performances of Davie Gracie some thirty years earlier keeping him out of the number one spot.