Bexley Athletic Club

Bexley Athletic Club is awarded Clubmark!

Bexley AC are proud to announce that we have been awarded Clubmark accreditation by England Athletics. Clubmark is the only national cross sports quality accreditation scheme for clubs with junior sections. It ensures that accredited clubs operate to a set of consistent, accepted and adopted minimum operating standards.

 During the last couple of years we have seen a growth in our junior section, particularly our 7-11 year old “Bexley Tigers”.  We now regularly attract between 30 and 40 Tigers each Sunday morning. It is important to us as a club that are able to show to parent and carers that we are operating to a minimum set of criteria approved by England Athletics. With the loss of Government funding, Bexley Council are no longer running sports activities during the school holiday. We are now working closely with Bexley Council to run athletics activities ourselves during the school holidays and after school courses. Clubmark was essential to Bexley Council supporting this new venture.

Gaining Clubmark accreditation represents an important development in the 57 year history of Bexley AC. The process to gain Clubmark provided the opportunity to review our policies and procedures across the entire club.  This included not only ensuring we had the correct procedures in place for junior members but also provided other benefits such as implementing an athlete development programme for promising athletes and ensuring we were operating in a safe environment for all athletes, regardless of age. Overall, it has been a positive experience that has engaged the whole club. We are now looking forward to building upon and developing further upon the hard work of all the coaches, officials, committee members  and other volunteers who work hard to make the club successful.

Elspeth Turner, England Athletics, presented the Clubmark award to Karen Winfield OBE, Tigers Training Co-Ordinator at Erith Stadium.

Karen Winfield OBE

Tigers training at Erith stadium is cancelled on Easter Sunday, 24 April 2011. Training resumes as normal on Sunday 1st May 2011.

So you book your holidays around the matches, we now have next seasons Kent league fixtures

Oct 8th   Swanley Park,               Oct 29th  Somerhill School – Tonbridge      Nov 12th   Danson Park

Dec 3rd – Sparrows Den – West Wickham     Feb 11th  Parkwood School – Swanley

Top star performances – but if only we had a bigger team

Our opening match (Kent young athletic league) brought out some really fine performances for everyone inc the newie’s. But worryingly very thin on the ground in team numbers.  The only area were we did have a full team, was our under 15 girls with this section easy winners in this grouping.

Under 13 Girls  Felt sorry for Kerri Johnson our only under 13 lady, but she flew the flag amicably with 3.41 in the 1000m despite just returning from injuring. She really wanted to do the long jump and good job we relented and winning with a pb of 3.45.

Under 15 Boys  All top performances Andre Stone closely followed by Ben Matthews set new PB’s of 10.26 & 10.29 for 2^nd & 1^st in their respective strings in the 3000m. Joseph O’Hara breezed his 1500 in a Grade 4 time of 4.37. Like the rest of team competed gamely in other events, they were most upset not to field a 4×400.

Under 13 boys, showed great team spirit. Cameron Lyttle dominated the sprints winning 100 in 13.0 dead for a Grade 2, & winning the 200 for grade 4.  Harry Jarvis with a rotten cold (you couldn’t miss his red nose) won the high jump with 1.30 getting a Grade 4.  Robert Lawrence was second in the b race 100 on his debut and was very competitive elsewhere. Another debut Dan the man (Walton) a future star in the throws area winning the javelin & doing very well elsewhere. With later all four putting up a good show in the relays.

Under 15 girls We were not short of this age group with most areas covered. with even two relay teams. Notable performances were Victoria Blincoe 17.99 1^st in the discus, Maria Eremionhale 2^nd in the shot. Joanne Okusanya 2^nd in the javelin & Kattie Butterworth proved she could do anything with 2^nd in the 300m. In the 800 Harley Wooler just piped Victoria by 0.03 of second in a very exciting race. Elsewhere Abi Olagbaiye, Monica Faulkner, Olivia Bailey, Eleanor Winch, showed with fine displays in a wide range of events what a promising young team we have.

It was a real pleasure to be associated with this team; everyone had a go at everything, never a complaint. With our depleted teams the final league result does not reflect the very high standard many of our athletes set. There is only one message for you youngsters who didn’t make it – YOUR TEAM NEEDS YOU.

For full results check out the Kent county web site at

www.kcaa.org.uk

Next match for this age group is the National Young Athletics league at Hastings on the 8^th May. Watch out for notices

My thanks on the day to John Gates, Steve Walker & Nick Winfield for their support and as field officials