Under 12- under 17 Juveniles

In the new year, we have a few competitions for our older group of juveniles that as a club and as parents/guardians we should encourage our athletes to participate in –  Leinster Juvenile Cross Country Relay Championships in Laois and the Leinster Indoor Championships in Athlone I.T.

We do appreciate that these events will take 1.5-2hrs travel to get to; however for the older juveniles, they are at the stage that most events will now involve some travel.  In the older juvenile training group we have 44 registered athletes and an average of 25 who come to training each week, so we should be able to put a team into some of these races.

If we do get the numbers for these events – if parents themselves wanted to organise a bus that could be an option (however 1 adult per athlete would be requested to be on the bus also for insurance & safety – all parents would be responsible for their own child)- if anybody wants to volunteer for that organising job let me know!

·    The races at the Juvenile Cross Country Relay Championships are on the 19^th January in Ballyroan, Laois at 12noon. We need 4 athletes per age group to make a team.

·    Two weeks later we have the Juvenile Indoor Relays on the 1^st February 2014 in Athlone. This will be in the new National indoor track. Again we need 4 athletes per age group.

·    The Leinster Indoor Juvenile Individual Events are on the 8^th & 9^th March 2014 in Athlone also. There are a variety of Track & Field Events that we have covered in Training.

These events would be a great experience for the athletes and with the improvements seen in all athletes in the past few months in training– we could really do quite well. With this older group at training, most have participated in Meath Events, but with the help of parents we do need to try to progress their athletics by participating in Leinster events also. The coaches need the parents to be on board if this is to progress. This will not only help keep the children in the sport, but will also help personal development of the juveniles. Meath have the largest number of athletic club members per head of population in the country so Meath Competitions would be already one of the toughest counties to participate in–so don’t think Leinster athletics as a Massive step up… we are all about the baby steps to try keep athletes in the sport.

*If we can get any parents to help out with this older group, please volunteer – be it to take names and money at the start of training, or help with collecting membership forms or race registrations. For parents even just knowing race tips or basic warm up/ cool down for a race would benefit your juvenile– if we can help you with anything like this please just ask. We have closed our membership for juveniles at the moment as we have reach our limits on coach/athlete ratios, so we really could do with a hand even just for the first 10minutes of training each night so that we can run training smoothly. Any help is welcomed .

For 2014 competitions: under 12 means they were born in 2003, under 13 is 2002, under 14 is 2001, under 15 is 2000, under 16 is 1999 and under 17 is 1998. Please make sure they know their category!

For the first 2 Relay events we really need to know before Christmas if ythe juveniles will be available for selection for a relay team, so that we can get them entered on time.

Competitions may be a little scary to some but you really do make new friends all over the country and learn new skills and maybe win some medals too!  The older group are getting to the age that they will either stick with athletics or drop out and we really want them to stick with it –and for that we need your help to get them participating in weekend events to give them goals for training. Most of this group is in Secondary school – so please encourage them to be on the school athletics team and do any extra training they can during the week.

If you are available to go to these events with your juvenile athlete, please let me know before xmas by let me know at training or  by emailing me at doireannmeade@gmail.com – to see if we have enough for some teams.

Keep an eye on the WEBSITE for all juvenile news and general club news: www.staroftheseaac.com

P.S. Best of Luck to Cian McNulty Casey who is on the Meath u13 team this weekend in Wexford in the national cross country championships!!

Doireann                                                                                                                           

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Members Name: __________________________________

Age group for 2014 (please see above categories): _______________

Please tick if available:

Juvenile Cross Country Relays Laois: 

 Juvenile Indoor Relays Athlone:

I will be available to bring my juvenile athlete(s) to the above event(s):

Signed: __________________________________________