WPH Junior Club Champs – A Great Day For All

17/06/2019

This year’s Junior Club Championships and Invitational at Little Marlow on Sunday 16th June was a great success – that’s what we’ve been told told by people on the day and since. Here is a flavour of the many positive comments that were received by email almost before the event ended:

A big vote of thanks from all of us at Great Milton AC to you and your team for a lovely day at your Open Meeting today. The event was so well organised, impressively so, and the speed of the results unbelievable. We loved your venue, and the brilliant barn and container. It was a great day out for all parents and athletes, and for my wife and I. A big thank you to all the volunteers who made it happen.

On behalf of Cookham RC we just wanted to say a huge thank you for inviting us to your club champs. Superbly organised and ON TIME

Have to say this was a really superior event. Of all the track meets we’ve been to, it was the friendliest and most efficient/organised AND it has the best food ….. a bacon cheeseburger to die for!!

The aim of the event is to have some good athletics while gently introducing new athletes and their families to properly run competition, with all the rules and procedures that go with that. It’s good to know that we are getting it right.

Thank you to the local clubs (and some further afield) who continue to support the event by sending athletes to compete and giving the day a buzz.

And here’s what the officials had to say about the athletes “I loved working with the youngsters. … They were polite and enthusiastic”.

I hope everyone will also join me to thank all the volunteers who made this event happen, from qualified officials from WPH and other clubs to first time helpers from Wycombe Phoenix. It takes a lot of people to run an event like ours and it really couldn’t happen without them all stepping forward and doing what they were asked.

Some of the familiar faces are friends from outside the club and we are grateful that Maurice Skermer (Chief starter), Doug Smith (Chief timekeeper), John How (Track Referee), Martyn Cartwright (field judge) and John Sear (track judge) gave up their time again this year.

You may have noticed two new features this year, as trials: the electronic start equipment and the web-published results. Thank you to Chris Wood and Jonathan Roberts respectively for bringing these for our club’s use and for “mucking in” with everyone else during the day. We hope that the day was as beneficial to them as it was to those using the systems.

The day was all about teamwork. I think that I can safely say that everyone who was there learned something and it was wonderful to see all the volunteers sharing their knowledge and supporting the less experienced. I was proud to see our young qualified officials guiding older trainees in an unselfconscious way.