Introduction

Hello and welcome to our latest club newsletter

This month’s edition contains reminder again about fund raising with Tesco, and recruitment drive for coaches and officials.

 Best wishes, Jason Pender, Club President

Tesco Fund Raising

The club is bidding for a cash boost from the Tesco Community Grants initiative. Tesco works with community charity Groundwork to run its community funding scheme, which sees grants of up to £1,500, £1,000 and £500 awarded to local community projects.

Three groups in every community have been shortlisted to receive the cash award and shoppers are being invited to head along to Tesco stores to vote for who they think should take away the top grant.

Kilbarchan is one of the groups on the shortlist.

The project is to purchase Kilbarchan AAC Sports Hall Kit.

You can vote NOW for the project in the following local Tesco stores:

• Linwood, Paisley PA3 3DB Superstore
• Tesco Express Garage, Renfrew Road, Paisley PA3 4EA
• Paisley PA1 1QA Superstore.

At the checkout, please ask for a token and place the token in the appropriate box in the way out of the store. You can also pick up tokens if using the self-service check outs. Voting is open in the above stores in January, February and March.

Please support the club with this project.

Club Events

Events organised by the club

Saturday 12 March 2022

We need more time to organise the club cross country championships, so we’ve moved the date into March. The plan is to host it at Shanks Park in Johnstone. Details to follow once we confirm the booking.

Track Stars Group

The Monday Wednesday group has been tremendously successful in recent years. With some coaching staff moving on to new roles we are looking to provide more roles in this area to support Track Stars. We are working on potential solutions but if parents / members are interested in helping in this area here are some roles you might be interested in:

Coach roles – we’d love to bolster the coaches in this area with three additional coaches. You might have no experience but if you are willing to coach one or two days on a regular basis the club will provide coach mentoring and work towards sending you on formal coach development courses. Persons in these roles will be subject to Disclosure check for child protection purposes.

Volunteer coach assistants – typically school pupils looking to do their Duke of Edinburgh Awards in coaching or keen parents looking to give something back to the community. These roles will support the coaches in delivering athletics training sessions.

Track Stars Admin Support – if you are a parent or adult club member, we’re looking for someone in the background to take register, set up the Class4Kids camps for each training block, deal with parent queries. Training will be provided. Person in this roles will be subject to Disclosure check for child protection and security purposes.

If you are interested, please drop jasonpender64@outlook.com an email with what you’d like to pursue.

Coaching Vacancies

There is always a need for coaches in the club. If you want to support or shadow existing coaches this might be a route to yourself becoming a club coach. The club once it’s sees you committed to regular nights will pay for coaching qualifications. An idea of coaching courses is available on the Scottish Athletics website

Qualifications – Scottish Athletics

If you are interested, please drop jasonpender64@outlook.com an email with what you’d like to pursue.

Coaching Sub Group

The coaching sub-group has kicked off again looking at current coaches and potential improvements in coaching structure and gaps across the club.

The more coaches we have the greater the capacity we have to bringing athletes through. If you are interested in helping please contact our Club Development Officer Rupert Williams for further information.

Email him via Bookings-KilbarchanAAC@outlook.com

Also, if you have any ideas and suggestions you think might be worth pursuing please drop our Club Development Officer Rupert Williams an email.

Press Reports

The club has a presence in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, club web site and circulate press reports to the local press (Paisley Daily Express). If you have a paragraph of news you wish to share please send it to the following people and we’ll try and put it out on the social media:

kilbarchan.web@gmail.com, kilbarchanaacsecretary@outlook.com, johngrodger@outlook.com, jasonpender64@outlook.com, callummatthews63@gmail.com

Going forward it would be good if the club had a press officer. If you are interested in this volunteer role please contact jasonpender64@outlook.com .

Athletics Technical Officials

Volunteering in athletics. As well as just helping out with the clubs’ activities you could also become a Technical Official and help out at competitions. We asked a parent of a former member of the club Margaret Ann McLachlan how she became an official.

My name is Margaret-Ann MacLachlan and currently I am a Track and Endurance UK Athletics official. My first involvement with athletics and Kilbarchan was as a parent, when I took my daughter, Sarah-Jane, to her training. When the club went to athletic events, I volunteered to be a helper with the officials. When Sarah-Jane stopped running competitively, I continued my involvement and attended a track officiating course at a Scottish Athletics training day. I then started officiating at events.  I enjoyed the atmosphere at meetings and quickly realised that for Scottish athletes to continue to compete at a high level, not only did we require the best coaches and club sport systems we also required well informed technical officials. I completed the then grading progression scheme. I have been selected for many top-level events as well as officiating at local open events, leagues and championships.

I have made friendships which have lasted many years and I continue to meet new keen parents as I am now a tutor for officials and an advocate for mentoring.

I would encourage anyone who wishes to support Kilbarchan and Scottish Athletics to consider becoming an official. I have found officiating to be very rewarding.

If you’d like to purse officiating please contact jasonpender64@outlook.com

Further information on officiating can be obtained on the Scottish Athletics website https://www.scottishathletics.org.uk/officials/ or by contacting Shona Malcolm, Officials Recruitment and Development Officer at shonamalcolm@scottishathletics.org.uk

Club Kit and Vests

Donna Matthews holds our club kit and can meet and greet you most Thursdays 7pm to 7.30pm at the track in the portakabin.

Further details on the club website including contact details https://kilbarchanaac.org.uk/kit/

Scottish Athletics Events Calendar

https://scottishathletics.sportserve.net/pages/event/athletics/athleticsfixturelist.aspx?pid=10000

Date	Event Name	Venue	Type	Entry	Closing Date
Sat 19 Feb 2022	4J Studios scottishathletics National Indoor U15/U20	Emirates	Track and Field	Own portal	03/02/22
Sun 20 Feb 2022	4J Studios scottishathletics National Indoor U13/U20 Championships	Emirates	Track and Field	Own	03/02/22
Sat 26 Feb 2022	Lindsay’s National Cross Country Championships	Callendar Park, Falkirk	XC	Club(C4K)	09/02/22
Thu 3 Mar 2022	SSAA Secondary Schools’ Cross Country Championships	Hopetoun House Estate, Queensferry	XC	School
Sat 5 Mar 2022	Allan Scally Relay incorporating Scottish Students Championships	Glasgow Green, Glasgow	Road	Club
Sun 6 Mar 2022	Scottish Athletics Indoor League 4	Emirates Arena, Glasgow	Track and Field	Club
Sun 13 Mar 2022	Inverness 1/2 Marathon 2022	Inverness Sports Centre, Inverness	Road	Own
Sun 13 Mar 2022	scottishathletics Spring Throws Meeting	Ayrshire Athletics Arena, Kilmarnock	Track and Field	Own
Sun 13 Mar 2022	Jack Crawford 10K	The Leisuredrome, Bishopbriggs	Road	Own
Sun 20 Mar 2022	Scottishathletics Young Athletes Road Races	Battery Park, Greenock	Road	Club(C4K)	04/03/22
Sat 26 Mar 2022	Scottishathletics 6/4 Stage Road Relays	Livingston	Road Race	Club	10/03/22