CENTRAL ACs best all-rounders were in action in Grangemouth at the Scottish Schools Pentathlon Championships last weekend.

This was the second of four days of action, as the Central starts took on the top athletes from across the country.

Matt Chandler showed his experience in the group B (under 17) boys pentathlon having represented Scotland twice in this event.

The 16-year-old from opened well in the shot event with 10.44m, just short of his personal best, to place him in joint third.

He then followed this with a personal best 13.91s at 100m hurdles, narrowly losing the race to come second.

This moved Matt to second place, overall, though one of his competitors had to withdraw due to injury.

Matt then leapt to an excellent 6.49m PB at the long jump, however, but could only finish in second.

It was a similar result in the 200m as he finished, despite claiming another personal best in 23.52s.

By the final 1500m event, Matt was too far behind to catch the front-runner, but was all but guaranteed silver.

Matt finished in 4:55.83 – another personal best – to secured second overall with a excellent score 3339 points.

Elsewhere, Balfron's Briagha Cook was also on form in the Group C (age 14) girls pentathlon.

She took a clear lead at the start in her specialist 75m Hurdles event, in a season's best 11.77s.

She increased her lead after finishing joint winner of the high jump with a personal best 1.51m.

While the shot was always going to be her weakest event, a personal best of 7.57m kept her in the hunt for the lead.

However, this was not enough to prevent her dropping to second place as Nicole Proudfoot of Annan Academy threw 9.99m to go in front.

Briagha then set another excellent personal best in the long jump with 5.21m, but Nicole more than matched this to stretch her lead with an amazing 5.51m leap.

Going into the 800m Nicole was too far in front to challenge but Briagha had a big lead over the athletes behind her.

She managed to finish in a steady 2:44.45 which was enough to comfortably hold onto silver medal position in a personal best score of 2846 points.

Lucy Smith of Dollar Academy was another experienced competitor having represented Scotland in Ireland in the pentathlon recently.

She was competing for the first time in the group B age group and opened well, equalling her seasons best in the high jump with 1.52m for second place.

She then completed her first ever 80m hurdles race in 13.94s, though dropped to third place overall. A 4.46m long jump saw her fall to fifth, but only 26 points away from third.

A strong shot performance of 9.05m put her back into a medal position, but to hold onto a podium place she needed to stay within six seconds of the fourth-place athlete in the 800m.

However, her challenger was a strong runner and though Lucy tried hard to track her, the effort proved too much and Lucy got into difficulties forcing her to stop.

Unfortunately, this meant she was not able to score any points in the 800m ending her medal challenge, but in spite of this she still finished in a respectable 6th place.

Meanwhile, Daniel Bruce was contesting the boys group C pentathlon and set personal bests in the 80m hurdles (13.16s), 200m (27.26s) and long jump (4.83m) to score 1872 points for 8th place.

The girls group D (under 14) pentathlon had a strong Central AC representation with Bannockburn High pair Naomi Howlieson and Ellie Ross joined by Balfron High's Molly Cornes.

In the 75m hurdles all three were running the event for the first time ever. Molly ran well with 13.68s followed by Naomi (16.66s) and Ellie (17.46s).

Ellie then set a personal best high jump at 1.21m; Naomi cleared 1.33m, then when the bar reached 1.39m Molly went clear for an excellent personal best of 1.39m.

There were further personal bests in the shot for Molly (6.65m) and Naomi (5.69m) with Ellie throwing 4.26m.

And it was personal bests all round in the long jump with Naomi jumping 4.03m, Molly 4.02m and Ellie 3.24m.

Just the 800m remained and Ellie and Naomi ran in the first heat with Ellie running 2:56.84 and Naomi 2:57.45. Molly was in the final heat with the lead competitors and ran a season's best 2:49.02 minutes just missing her personal best.

For all three it was a great experience and all of them were rewarded with personal best scores. Ellie finished on 1262 points for 25th but has another year in this age group. Naomi scored 1677 points for 17th and Molly finished in the top third of the field with 2105 points for 9th place.

There was additional good news as Matt, Lucy, Briagha and Daniel who were invited to join the Scottish schools pentathlon squad.

They will all benefit from specialist coaching and the team for this year's schools international is selected out of this squad. Well done to all our competitors.