DOLLAR ACADEMY pupil Lucy Smith (FII) was on top form at the Scottish Schools Pentathlon Championships at Grangemouth earlier this month after clinching a silver medal against the top all-rounders from across the country.

Competing in the Group C Under-15 age group, Lucy started with a decent 13.08s 75m hurdles into a strong headwind and ended up 5th overall. This was good, to be sure, but the highlight of the day for Lucy came in the High Jump.

With a personal best of 1.51m, the high jump has always been one of her strongest events, but on Saturday Lucy comfortably cleared the bar first time at every height up to 1.52m where she set her first new personal best.

Lucy then showed great character, improving with every attempt before clearing 1.55m on her 3rd and final attempt, this meant that she was the only athlete remaining in the competition. But Lucy was not finished there.

She dug in and produced yet another fantastic jump to clear 1.58m at the 2nd attempt. This meant that Lucy added 7cm to her personal best in one competition.

This jump also gave her a huge 712 points putting her up into 2nd place overall. A decent 8.49m shot maintained 2nd place for her and a 4.52m long jump kept the points ticking over, but one of her rivals jumped 4.86m and so she slipped to 3rd. She knew, when the final 800m event came, that she had work to do.

Lucy has great competitive spirit, however, and so it was no surprise when she ran the 800m in 2:37 minute. This saw her finish a remarkable 7 seconds ahead of her rival, and she clinched the silver medal with an excellent score of 2731 points.

This performance also gives Lucy an excellent chance of selection for the Scotland team at the Schools Pentathlon International at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow in December 2016.

If she makes the team she will be following in the footsteps of her older sister Georgia Smith who represented Scotland at this event in 2014 and recently became a double international, having now represented Scotland at Under-16 level in both athletics and hockey. Tremendous congratulations to Lucy on this fine achievement.