Monthly archive for January 2021

Congratulations to Mary Hodges of Leamington C&Ac and Warwickshire who won the England Athletics National Volunteer Award for “Official of the year”. Mary went through to the finals after winning the West Midlands Regional award. Mary is renowned not only for her officiating, particularly on field events and endurance events of all sorts, but also for her recruitment of new officials then their development and mentoring. Massive well done to Mary and thank you for all you have done for your Club, your County and the sport in general.
You can see more about the awards and watch a recording of the presentations through this link to the EA web site
England Athletics National Volunteer Awards HERE

The Ellis Trophy and the Endurance Trophy are the County Association’s most prestigious. As the name implies, the Endurance Trophy is awarded to the best endurance performance by a County athlete anywhere in the world and the Ellis Trophy goes to the best performance other than endurance.
The winners for the last season are Omar Ahmed of Birchfield Harriers (Endurance, pictures above) and Elliot Giles also of Birchfield Harriers (Ellis). Congratulations to both lads for winning these awards.
Read on for more details.
Warwickshire Ellis and Endurance Trophies.
With the 2020 Track & Field season in Britain being pretty much a non event because of COVID 19, I was not expecting to be able to make any decisions on who I should choose as the winner of the Ellis Trophy. But our best athletes were still able to compete abroad. I have therefore had a very difficult choice between three brilliant Warwickshire athletes. A previous holder of the Ellis Trophy, Andrew Pozzi competed in many events abroad which included a first place in the 60mts hurdles in Madrid in February, with a time of 7.48s, and a 13.14s 110 mts hurdles for a second place to Spain’s Orlando Ortega, in Monaco in August. Elliot Giles, previous four times winner of the British Championship title, ran his PB for 800 mts (1.44.56) when finishing a close second to Kenya’s Ferguson Rotich, in the Diamond League meeting at Doha in September. Meanwhile, back on home ground, Craig Murch was able to take part in a socially distant British Championship which was held at Manchester, where he won his first national title, winning the Hammer Throw with 73.24 mts.
Three brilliant performers, and Warwickshire is most fortunate to have such high class athletes. But a nightmare to decide who to award the Ellis Trophy to. After much deliberation, I have decided in favour of Elliot Giles to be awarded the Ellis Trophy for 2020, with a big “well done” to Andy and Craig.
The Endurance Trophy this year I found to be a more straightforward decision. COVID 19 put a stop to most events both here in the UK and abroad. So I am left to make the decision based on cross country events held before the pandemic struck. My choice of the athlete to be awarded this trophy is Omar Ahmed, of Birchfield Harriers. Omar was a clear winner of the Warwickshire cross country title, and then he went on to win the Midland title. In the “National”, Omar finished in 14th place which is of course a very fine performance. So I award Omar the Endurance Trophy for 2020.
Bob Carey. Warwickshire AA President 2020.

All of us at Warwickshire County AA wish you and all of your club colleagues a happy and prosperous (and safe) 2021. Last year was extremely difficult and we are not over it yet but at least there is now light at the end of the tunnel and a prospect of getting back to normal. We just don’t know how long the tunnel is!

Would you like a Marquee?

Some time ago the County Association bought a marquee which you will have seen at our cross country Championships. It is 6m by 3m and white. It is extremely sturdy because the poles are larger than usual. If you or your club would be interested in buying it from WCAA then please let me know

Annual General Meeting

We would normally have held a WCAA and WRRL general meeting in November but for obvious reasons it wasn’t possible. Even though the previous year saw very little athletics we have decided to hold the meeting by Zoom on Wednesday 24^th February 2021 starting at 7.30. The details will be posted on the County web site. Please note that we are asking that people accept some of the items listed without discussion. If you or somebody from your Club would like to “attend” then please let the Hon Sec, Keith Richards, know and give him your e-mail address.

Keith Richards      <keith28richards@virginmedia.com>

Cross Country

We have given up any hope of a cross country championships this season. It is extremely unlikely that we will be able to stage races in the very near future. The UKCAU Inter County Championship has also been cancelled.

Fell Running

The Inter County Championships is scheduled for 8^th May 2021 at Bollington near Macclesfield but for obvious reasons you should keep checking the FRA web site for details

Race Walks

The County race walks championship was due to be held within the Midland Championship but has been postponed. Hopefully it will happen later in the year.

Track and Field

We are hopeful that we can stage the County track and field championships over the weekend of 8th/9th May 2021 at Nuneaton. As things stand we are not absolutely sure that it will happen so make a note of the date, keep your fingers crossed, and watch out for more news. That date is early in the season so there is scope to move back through the season to a later date if necessary.

Road Running

We are hopeful that the Warwickshire Road Races will go ahead and several clubs have already started their planning. For obvious reasons, the earlier races are more at risk of cancellation than those later in the season. We start with an assumption that there will be between 10 and 12 races with 6 to count if there are 10 or 11 but 7 to count if there are 12. If cancellations cause races to be cancelled such that there are fewer than 10 races then the number of races to count will be reduced correspondingly. If there are fewer than 7 races then we will not award League medals at the end of the season.

If a race is cancelled then it will be replaced by a non-scoring virtual race of the same distance. A massive thank you and well done, to Anthony Morgan of Kenilworth Runners for organising the virtual races to date.