A message from our Club President

On behalf of the Committee, I would like to welcome you to the 2024-25 season with three-time ‘Club of the Year’ Corroboree Athletics. This is my seventh year as President, and I look forward to making your athletic experience as great as it can be and offer a special warm welcome to any new families.

I’m pleased to advise that Tradies Dickson have donated another $4,000 to the club which we will use to cover the costs of track marking where the government have decided to use paint instead of oil and are charging the clubs for it. We thank Tradies whole heartedly for their generous sponsorship that allows us to keep offering a great product to our kids and look forward to working with them into the future.

The Tradies Dickson money will also be used to sponsor our Tiny Tots ‘Froglet’ program which was introduced last season. This program is for our budding 3 and 4 year olds born in 2020 or 2021.

Corroboree is now truly a club for all ages where we have Saturday morning events for U6-U17s, our Froglets program and then we also offer two events each week for our Open members of all ages. You can wear the Corroboree shirt for your entire athletic career.

Last season was another successful one with record membership (450+ members of all ages) and filling the trophy cabinet with the ACT Relay Carnival and the U6-U8 Teams Challenge (both now four-time champions).

We aim to provide a quality program of athletics events with a focus on fun, fitness, and skills development in a safe, family-friendly, and inclusive environment. While athletics is by its very nature competitive, our goal for all our athletes is to achieve Personal Bests (PBs) by improving their own times, distances, and heights, and above all, to have fun.

We are offering 14 meets and weekly training sessions this season as well as the Corroboree Gift in its regular Xmas time-slot. The Gift is a handicapped event that allows the not so fast kids to start in front of their faster compatriots. We had 10 and 12 year old champions last season.

With the increased membership size we have, we will continue to offer earlier time starts for some age groups to avoid any bottlenecks. We always look for improvements based on previous years’ experience and feedback. Our main goal each season is to host Saturday morning meets that run smoothly, with minimal waiting times, and a not-too-late finish. This relies on a good program, good facilities, and many helping hands. We see the role of parent/s as very hands-on; we need you to help us run great meets and we expect parents to step into roles such as Age Group Coordinators, timing assistants, long jump measurers and assist in running the BBQ, to name just a few. Any assistance with set-up and particularly pack-up is always welcome.

As at the time of writing, we are looking for a BBQ manager and some parents willing to coach our U6-U8 kids during Wednesday training sessions on the more technical events. If you can help us out, let us know ASAP.

I encourage you to participate in ACT carnivals and help us defend the titles we have won over the past seasons.

Finally, I would like to thank all those who have volunteered to serve on the Committee this season. Corroboree needs great parents to run it and I am fortunate to have a fantastic team helping me run this club and we are always looking for more parents to assist on the Committee or at our Saturday meets. I would also like to acknowledge our coaches for their ongoing commitment to developing our juniors. We are extremely fortunate to have such a strong group of people supporting our club but could always do with some more. I look forward to seeing you all out there this summer.

Garry Stevens
President