Buxton & District Athletic Club :: Information about the Club

Content

Background
Mission statement
Coaching structure
Club development
Affiliation

Background

The club was founded in 1977 and celebrated its 25th birthday in 2002. The club just celebrated its 30th Anniversary with a party at the Railway in Buxton. I was very pleased that four of the founder members could be present, namely Chris Bent, Jim Bradley, Pat Grundy and Norman Taylor.

The club takes an inclusive approach and welcomes female and male runners, throwers and jumpers of all ages, ability, ambition, ethnic background and physical and mental disability.

The membership is gradually increasing, though the numbers do fluctuate from year to year. There are currently about 60 senior and veteran athletes, most of whom are active. There is also a thriving Junior section, that operates more or less autonomously of the senior section. There are roughly 70 youngsters on the books, encompassing a wide range in terms of ability, experience and level of ambition.

Norman Taylor is our club President. Norman is very knowledgeable and occasionally helps out coaching our young athletes. He also provides a very good link with the local community. He works as a sports reporter for High Peak Radio (103.3 and 106.4 FM) and regularly conducts interviews with our coaches and athletes.

The club organises two open road races - the Buxton Half Marathon in late May or early June and the Carnival '5' which is held in conjunction with the Buxton Carnival around the middle of July. These races are usually well supported, with people travelling from all over the Midlands and the Northwest. The two races are hard, with unrelenting uphill sections, but also offer breathtaking views. Members of the club are also organising two fell races - the Shining Tor fell race in May and Goyts Moss fell race in July.

The Membership fee for 2007 is £15.00 for Seniors and £0.00 (Free) for Junior Athletes. Please click here for an Membership Application Form, for Seniors only.

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Mission Statement

Apparently every self-respecting organisation should have a mission statement. We are not quite as formal as that. I would say that the members of the club enjoy running, especially offroad in the beautiful Peak District, and the camaraderie that exists between runners. There is of course a social side to running, which is just as important. The Wednesday training is usually followed by a swift half and a bit of banter. That is not to say that the seniors lack ambitions - far from it. The top runners in the club have ambitions of winning races and regularly do very well indeed in both local and national races. All of the runners have the ambition to set personal bests and do their best in each and every race.

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Coaching structure

Steve Finney was awarded Development Coach of the year for the East Midlands Region of UK Athletics in 2004. His enthusiasm has ensured the success of the club's links with local schools, see below.

The club has a group of coaches that cater for all track and field events, as well as general endurance. Most of the coaching activities are aimed at the juniors, but there are also sessions with more structured training for the seniors.

The club is developing links with school in the Borough of High Peak. This is a very successful venture. The children are very enthusiastic as are our coaches. A large number of the junior school pupils are regularly coming to our Thursday night training session. We have visited Buxton Junior School, Harpur Hill School, St Ann's School, Fairfield Endowed School, Dove Holes School and schools in Castleton, Hope, Grindleford, Hollinsclough, etc.

We have entered an Club School Partnership agreement with Buxton Community School, a specialist Sports College, which will see us deliver Athletics coaching in local Primary and Secondary schools over the next few years.

All coaches have qualified under the current UK Athletics coaching scheme or have transferred their old qualifications to this scheme.

Coaching Qualification	Number of coaches	Endurance	Sprints	Jumps	Throws
Level 1	0	Not Applicable	Not Applicable	Not Applicable	Not Applicable
Level 2	5	3	3	3	2

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Club development

The club has completed the UK Athletics club audit and is now preparing itself to achieve clubmark status by the end of April 2006. The club is committed to this task.

Milestone	Target date	Status
club:future	31 January 2005	Achieved
clubmark	30 April 2005	on-going

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Affiliation

The club is affiliated to the following associations:

Organisation	Organisation
Derbyshire County Athletic Association	North of England Athletic Association
AAA of England	Fell Runners Association
Buxton Sports Forum	High Peak Sports Forum

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