DEFENDING their Forth Valley Athletics League Division 1 title from 2015, Team Borders made a strong start to the 2016 campaign at a very chilly Meadowbank Stadium in the capital on Saturday.

And for the very first time in their fifth year of competing in the league, it was the field events in which Team Borders proved very marginally the stronger.

Undoubted star of the day was Chirnside’s Keira Waddell who not only took maximum points in the Under 15 Girls javelin, but smashed the league record by well over six metres with her winning throw of 32.48m. Keira is currently ranked top Scot and 3rd in the UK.

Also taking maximum points, this time in the Under 15 Girls Shot Putt was Gala’s Rhiannon Gerrard with a throw of 8.64m.

These two wins, and the supporting points gained elsewhere in the Field, are the shoots of the efforts being made by the Borders clubs and their coaches in trying to improve the availability of coaching of field events for athletes in the Borders which has traditionally always been predominately a strong running region.

The final results were still subject to scrutiny at the time of writing but across all the Field events on Saturday Borders were placed second of the eight teams, a mere two points behind Edinburgh and only one half an event point ahead of Dunfermline.

On the track there were ‘A’ race wins for Chirnside’s Hannah Hamilton-Meikle, who won the Under 13 Girls 800m by a clear four seconds in 2.41.44, Moorfoot Michael Girdler who ran with confidence to pounce down the home straight for 2.12.83 in the Under 15 Boys 800m, Gala’s Sam McAneny in the Under 11 Boys 100m in a sparkling time of 14.21 seconds, and the Under 11 Boys 4 x 100m relay in which Sam was joined by ‘B’ race winner Matthew Beaton, Kyle Taylor and Angus Carlyle.

Across all the track events, also subject to final scrutiny, Borders again finished 2nd team by another very close margin, three event points adrift of Dunfermline.

So, in what proved to be an incredibly close contest overall, only seven and a half event points separated the top three of the eight participating teams, and it was Dunfermline who came out on top with 457.5 points ahead of Team Borders in second with 455 points and Edinburgh third on 450 points. The action resumes with Match 2 at Grangemouth on May 21.