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Presidents Report – Croydon Little Athletics Centre for the 06/07 Season

What a year!
With the Track upgrade being the dominate feature of the year to say the season was challenging would be an understatement.
We had higher registrations this year (500+) than last but predicably lost a lot of athletes when we shifted to Ringwood and the high amount of Friday Twilights didn’t help. But we ended up having 362 athletes compete on our centre championship weekend on our new red track back at Croydon while the weather threw every thing it could at us.

I would like to thank Mark Crow (team manager) for his outstanding efforts in his final year at the centre achieving the best results at both region and State that the centre has ever achieved. We finished 4th overall at State Relays and achieved 13 medals at state Track and Field. It goes without saying that he couldn’t do this by himself, but I will say it anyway. Thanks to all the dedicated coaches that volunteer their time for the benefit of the athletes and the centre and thanks to the athletes themselves for there outstanding efforts. Thanks to Andrew Howarth for steeping up and maintaining the Centre records this year of which we had 23 new records recorded for the season and an extra 27 broken for the inter-aths age groups.

The Track upgrade was forced onto us 4 weeks earlier than we anticipated which caused some heartache to the weekly program. The move to Ringwood was confusing for the first couple of weeks but we quickly settled in although it always felt different (not like home). The first 2 weeks of the New Year we competed with the Ringwood Little Athletics centre which went better than expected and I think we showed them a thing or two along the way. This is something we will have to repeat this coming season as Ringwood have there track upgraded.

The centre championships went quite well and running them back at Croydon on the new track made up for all of the pain of the disrupted season. Although the track markings were not totally complete, we had enough to run the day. We had James Merlino the State member for sport and recreation attend the official opening of the track along with members of the local council including the Mayor. I think from the comments that I received from these dignitaries on the day  that they all now have a better understanding of the part we play in the local community providing for the youth and families in Maroondah. This is something that we need to work on in the following years to get the facilities that we need for the centre.

In summary, a very challenging year with a great reward at the end which will take us through many seasons in the future. The Croydon Centre has great potential that has been building for some years and now with the track upgrade completed it shows us that Great things are possible when we work together as a centre.

Robert Drysdale
President
Croydon Little Athletics Centre