CLUB NEWSLETTER

Welcome to our first club newsletter. I shall begin with wishing you all a very Prosperous New Year and I certainly hope we can mirror the success our Athletes achieved in our first year.

Thank you to ALL the Athletes, parents, carers, coaches, officials, administration, family members, sports centre staff, local council sports unit, other volunteers and of course our sponsors.

Congratulations to Peter Barkley on being elected as the Panthers team captain for the coming year. I am sure Peter will lead us to another successful year.

The committee are well aware of your achievements and would love to celebrate your successes, however were unable to arrange anything around your busy Christmas schedules but would like a Club BBQ in the spring.

Good Luck to the ten volunteers who are hoping to gain their Grade 4 officiating qualification on Sunday 26^th February. (I hope you all measure up to Mike).

Thank you to Colin and Paul for offering to attend the Good Practice and Child Protection Course on 9^th February at Coppleston School .

Well done to Steven and Mathew on working so hard at the table top sale in Little Bealings and managing to sell those lovely ornaments (I think they could have sold sand to the Arabs on that day). I believe we raised £81.00 on the day and Del boy Ann had been selling items from her gaff prior to the event.

We are having a tabletop sale at Beacon Hill Special School on Saturday 18^th March so if you have any items to raise valuable funds please let us know.

Ann is as busy as ever trying and succeeding in many cases of raising funds to maintain our existence. Ann’s latest project in trying to build our future is buy a brick. Ann has written to over 100 companies asking them to purchase a brick for £25 and has raised I believe £200 already.

You are our hero Ann.

Mike Oakley also deserves a mention as he continuously plugs away behind the scenes ensuring we are running as a professional club should be and has recently been working tirelessly on gaining ClubMark status from UK Athletics. Keep up the good work Mike.

Hopefully you have all received your fixture list for 2006 and have seen

our first fixture is on Saturday 25^th March at Next Generation in Ipswich . This is a repeat on last year’s event and we hope to enter two teams of ten. Hopefully we should have eighteen teams taking part, which begins at twelve noon. Andrew Brooks has kindly volunteered to demonstrate Sportshall activities and manage the come and have a go corner and he is looking for a couple more mature helpers. Please, please, please if you are able to offer your services it would be fantastic. Perhaps the ideal opportunity for some of you to put those officiating skills into practise or just come along and soak up the atmosphere.

As you may already have heard we are hosting the Panther Challenge at Northgate Sports Centre on May 13^th. This is to show are gratitude to Norfolk panthers who hosted the event last year and also give us a chance to retain that trophy for another year. (By the way I hope you have all took time to look at our fantastic full trophy cabinet outside the bar area).

Obviously to host an event like this is unbelievable but now the work begins to give all the athletes and their families and friends a day to savour.

We hope to have teams from Norfolk and Chelmsford and also Athletes from across Suffolk schools.

The venue is booked, Mike and Tony are trying to round up the officials, I have written to the TA centre asking for assistance in supplying tents for athletes to shelter and if their cadets would consider helping with light refreshments.

Hopefully Ipswich Borough Council are going to give us some financial assistance and I have written letters to development companies offering them the chance to take advantage of promoting their business’s at this superb event. Now this is where you all fit in, please put your thinking caps on as to how we can make this day so special for all the athletes and hopefully raise some funds for the Clubs long-term existence.

Eg. Programme printing, medals, t-shirts, sideshows, face painting, volunteers etc.

WELL DONE! Amanda on officially becoming the Ipswich Athletics team manager. Well deserved. What a brilliant management team we will have for the Suffolk Youth Games coaching program as Mitzi and Ann are again managing the disabled athletes’ team.

Finally I would like to reiterate that this is your newsletter so please pass on articles you would like to share with all the Club, successes, coaching tips, events, jokes photographs, fundraising ideas, anything.

Danny

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