Club AGM: Spotlight on the Juniors
AGM Wednesday 24th November 2021
“Spotlight on the Juniors”
Overview:
We want to take the opportunity to share some highlights over the last 12 months of our Junior Club Members who are in the 8 to 14 age group. Our overall aim is to enable our younger athletes to have fun and to discover a real love for our sport. We want to encourage them to be the best athletes they can be and to do that we offer the opportunity throughout the year to train and try as many different events associated with running, hurdling, throwing and jumping. We are multi-event based in all aspects of training and competing.
Currently our Junior Membership is at 47 with a 50:50 split in gender > Female 24 and Male 23. Since June of this year when we really started to promote and recruit new members which coincided with our permanent move to the Rugby Club, we have registered 29 new members across the age range. On average we have 2 new people every week coming to ‘taster sessions’ with a 95% signing up for the full membership.
During the Spring/ summer season we are based at the Rugby Club and for the first time this year we were able to offer an 8-lane x 100metre grass track together with a throwing area. That made a huge difference to training activity and was reflected in the number of Juniors who came along for the Saturday Track Sessions at Kettering throughout the season.
Competitive events for our Junior Members have been limited certainly for the first half of this year. In May, some of our very youngest members represented the club at Quadkids – 4 different races over three events during the summer – they did really well. Some of our older athletes have also represented the club at Corby and Kettering Open Events primarily in track events.
At Market Harborough Junior Parkrun, 21 of our junior members have participated achieving some very credible PB’s since its return in June of this year.
We have now relocated to the Sports Hall at the Leisure Centre for the Autumn/Winter season where we continue to focus on the multi disciplines but with more emphasis on building on general fitness and conditioning. We are at maximum capacity every week with 36 athletes attending working with a solid team of 4 coaches which has been fundamental in building and growing our Junior Team. It’s been great to have John T back working with us – his expertise and technical knowledge is hugely respected and appreciated both with the other coaches and most importantly with our young athletes. A massive thank you to John, Jill and Catherine Poynton.
We have a great base to move forward with our Junior Team, it’s extremely rewarding to see so much potential and to have the opportunity to nurture and enable young people grow to be the best they can be.
Mel Brocklebank
Junior Coordinator
