ATHLETICS COURSE FOR CHILDREN

Held at New River Sports Centre on
27th, 28th and 29th May 2003

VIEW PHOTO ALBUM

ENFIELD & HARINGEY A.C.
The local schools were contacted by the Club's School Liaison Officer for Haringey (Derek Ives) in the weeks beforehand so that girls and boys with some aptitude for athletics should be encouratged to take part.

Thirty two people started on the Tuesday of half term for the first of three morning sessions from 10am until 1pm. Only three dropped out during the course, one because she felt unwell.

Coaches were recruited from the Club. All were qualified UK Athletics Coaches:

	Frank Adams	Level 3
	Derek Ives	Level 3
	Les Mars	Level 2
	Michael Brown	Level 2
	Peter Wells	Level 4

The intention was to coach a variety of events to a competent level in order to give the course a chance to experience good coaching for those events and in events of which they may not have had prior experience.

The organisation of the course was straightforward and consisted of four 40 minute sessions on the first two days and the final day consisted of a hexathlon competition which occupied the time.

DAY ONE
The vents coached were: Sprints, high jump, long jump and shot putt.

DAY TWO
Middle distance, hurdles, javelin and discuss.

DAY THREE
The hexathlon consisted of 55mH, standing long jump, 200m, javelin, high jump and 800m.

It is always difficult to recruit coaches during the working week, but on this occasion enough were available to make the course possible. We found that the competition took a little more time than we might have wished and overran by 20 minutes or so. The only way to restrict this would be to have the field events judged by two teams. That in turn means having, say three extra judges which then causes the problem of finding an extra three people for that third morning and probably increasing the costs of the course.

Perhaps it might have been better to have a normal pentathlon, but we wanted to give everybody as much encouragement as possible.

The photographs attached were taken by myself and cover both the coaching as well as some of the competition. There is an omission in that I forgot to take any of the high jump which I coached.

Following the competition, a presentation was made to the best girl, Torema Dorsett and Michael Oli-Awinka best boy by Frank Adams, Vice President of the Club.

I would like to thank, on behalf of the Club, Haringey Sports Development for their support and the New River Staff for presenting the Centre and Equipment so efficiently. In addition to the coaching, some of the Course Staff also undertook other duties for which I thank them.

Derek Ives for his Schools' Liaison role and Frank Adams for providing the scoring for the competition.

Peter G Wells

Coaching Secretary
Enfield & Haringey A.C.