April
Editorial (by Geoff Barratt).
March 2006 sees not only the end of another sportshall season, but also
the end of 9 years training. We began in October 1997 with two boys. We
were also lucky to field teams in any of the age groups. Some contained
none. So fast forward to 2006 - we are averaging 40 young athletes at
an unearthly hour on Saturday morning, and fielding not only full
teams, but successful ones in the North West League. Particularly
pleasing for me is that Ex (I hesitate to say retired) sportshall
athletes are now managing the teams. I feel redundancy suits me.
Last season continued the success of recent years - four teams to the
finals, one very near miss, four individual medals in these finals and
smiles on faces at the end. Sportshall athletics asked us to provide
officials for the National Finals in Birmingham, so Charlii, James,
Joe, Matt and Mike went down to help. Personally I think they go for
the freebies. On the wider front, following Joe's selection as Young
Coach of the Year for Stockport in 2005, we received two North West
Club Awards this year. Someone's beginning to notice. We're also
preciously close to Clubmark, which is a National accreditation. Many
thanks to Joe and Mike who've done huge amounts of work to prepare an
impressive submission.
And finally thanks to all of you who've helped maintain this level of
success and commitment. I've been involved in sport for many years now,
and I still reckon the hardest thing of all is the ability to turn up
regularly. Lots of you are managing to do that.
Still plenty of things on the agenda! We're organising a multi-events
meeting in June, have prepared a calendar of summer competitions, we'll
be holding a presentation evening so we can thank everybody, and of
course both training and holiday courses will continue. We're also
starting Monday night training. And then there's next season's
sports:hall!
Many thanks to you all!
Geoff Barratt (April 2006).
