East Kilbride athlete Meghan Porterfield broke a 33-year-old under-17 record at the School Games National Finals last week, but still reckons she can do better.
It has been a prolific end to the season for the athlete, who only turned 17 on Friday, but has been setting records and winning medals in several recent events.
In the most recent of those, at the UK School Games at Loughborough, Meghan threw a 44.81m pb to beat the Scottish under-17 discus record set in 1989 by Alison Grey, who is now her coach, before winning the competition on Sunday with 44.00m.
Meghan also won discus at the Welsh International with 42.34m, and at the 4J Scottish Under-17 Championships in Aberdeen the teenager won discus (41.74m) and shot put (15.05m).
Proud mum Mhairi, who is herself an accomplished thrower and has also won accolades this season, said: “She has been absolutely smashing it.
“Meghan is still very hard on herself. She’s delighted about what she’s done, but she’s still very critical.
“The weekend before the School Games National Finals she won the discus at the English Championships and was second in shot put, came straight up the road to go to Grangemouth for the under-20 Scottish Championships and again won the discus and was third in shot put.
“She came away from that weekend saying she had under-performed. I’m like ‘no you didn’t!’.
“I think now that she has had time to reflect on it all she realises how big a season she’s had.
“Two Scottish records in the one season at two different events is pretty incredible.”
Meghan has also been pleased to receive recognition from other athletes.
Mhairi explained: “Mhairi would like to do a scholarship in America one day and she’s getting a lot of recognition.
“The latest is that Scottish Athletics posted on Facebook that she had broken the discus record at the weekend and Tom Stoltman commented on it.
“She’s like ‘that’s the world’s strongest man commenting on a post about me’ so she was pretty happy with that.”
As mentioned earlier, Mhairi is no slouch herself and at the 4J Senior Championships in Aberdeen the former Commonwealth Games athlete won silver in shot put with 12.75m and bronze in hammer with 48.31m.
Mum Isobel Walters also won three Masters golds and two silvers at the British Transplant Games in shot put and discus.
Mhairi said: “That’s the first time I’ve been on the hammer podium in about 10 years so I managed a bronze in that and in shot put I was winning right until the last round.
“I was absolutely delighted to come away with two medals from the Scottish Championships.
“My mum went through the Scottish Masters Championships with me and came away with three golds and then went down to the British Transplant Games and came away with two silvers, so she’s doing really well as well.
“There are a lot of medals between us!”
Mhairi has been vastly impressed with how Meghan is progressing, as she prepares to move up to under-20 level.
She said: “I sat and wrote down Meghan’s achievements throughout the year and it’s incredible to look at what she’s done.
“Meghan moves up to under-20 next year.
“She went to the Welsh International down in Swansea at under-20 level and won, so she has stepped up an age group really well, performing really well with older girls in her age group.
“She is shy. She’s happy with how her season has gone, and in typical thrower style she would like to throw further.
“She was a wee bit disappointed that her 44m came at the end of the season, because that was the qualifying distance for the European Under-18s in Jerusalem.
“She has been threatening that distance all year, but she’s done it now.
“She’s delighted and happy, and is looking forward to a good winter’s training to come out and do more next year.
“Her season is finished now, so she gets a couple of weeks off training and then she’ll get back into it.
“She and I would like to thank East Kilbride Sports Council, who gave us a wee bit of help financially this year, and to the Scottish Athletics Academy who help us out sometimes as well.”
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