England Athletics – Weekly update
Subject: England Athletics – Weekly update
Message from Billy Green April 29, 2020 10:44
All Club e-mail messages can now be viewed via the Ilford AC web site link at ilfordathleticclub.co.uk/messages
Dear All,
I hope you are all staying safe and well…here is another update from England Athletics at the start of the 6th week of lockdown
Thank You
Firstly I just wanted to again thank each and every one of you, and your coaches, volunteers and members who’ve been continuing to keep athletes and runners engaged and connected throughout these challenging times. Here is a message from our CEO Chris Jones talking about innovation across the sport and how England Athletics and our members have adapted positively to the current situation. Chris also thanks the 700 plus clubs and 30,000 plus members who have affiliated and registered so far this year and talks about how the fees really do make a difference across many areas of the sport. The message can be found on the EA Facebook page and EA website
Virtual Club Nights
Our first Virtual Club Night took place on Tuesday evening last week, with 110 clubs taking part in the Big EA (Pub) Club Quiz. Congratulations to Angela Stephen from Littledown Harriers who was the inaugural winner with a score of 32 – well done! Virtual Club Nights will run weekly for the next few weeks on Tuesdays at 7pm and be hosted through the webinar platform or our Facebook live pages. This weeks Club Night will feature a Q&A with World and European medallist Jenny Meadows. To book onto this session click here. Future sessions can be booked on by clicking on the links below.
05th May – Q&A with Donna Fraser – click here to book
12th May – The BIG EA Quiz – click here to book
Webinars – Club Support, Coaching and Officials
Last week we ran a Club Welfare webinar as part of our Club Support webinar series and the recording is now live on the club support section of Athletics @Home along with recordings of all the other webinars we’ve delivered so far. This week the Club Support team will be delivering a webinar focussing on the benefits of cashless payments. Additional webinars will be added to the Club Support pages over the next week.
Officials @Home and the Coaching section of the Athletics @Home site continue to add new content and webinars on a regular basis so be sure to keep an eye out on these pages, and get involved where you can.
OpenTrack virtual racing and 2.6 Challenge
We’re excited to announce a new virtual racing partnership with OpenTrack. All England Athletics affiliated clubs, and RunTogether groups, are now able to use the OpenTrack platform free of charge to create virtual racing competitions and challenge. To celebrate the launch of the partnership, we’re encouraging all England Athletics affiliated clubs and RunTogether groups to support the 2.6 Challenge – a new initiative which aims to raise the £67 million for UK charities that would have been raised by the now-postponed Virgin Money London Marathon. You can fundraise for any charity and we’re asking all clubs and RunTogether groups to create a 26-minute virtual competition, starting on 26 April, using OpenTrack.
Keep in Touch – changes to Club Support contacts
At the end of this week a number of our Club Support team are being placed on furlough for the next month until the end of May. This situation is being reviewed constantly, but due to the current financial climate we have taken the decision to explore all options for England Athletics to be financially prudent. Rest assured that this will not impact on the quality of support we are able to offer you and your club. From Monday 4th May a new email contact for all Club Support matters will go live: clubsupport@englandathletics.org. Please use this email for all general enquiries until further notice. For all ongoing projects that your club is working on where ongoing support is required these will be shared across the remaining Club Support Managers who will offer support as required. For any more in depth queries we will set up an appointments based system where you can book in a call with one of the team. More details about this will be sent early next week.
As outlined above some of the Club Support Team will be on furlough from the end of this week, however I will be continuing to work together with a smaller group of colleagues who are not on furlough to provide club support during this time.
As always we continue to post information across all of our social media platforms and share ideas and solutions from other clubs that you may find useful. Don’t forget to update your profile on MyAthletics Portal to make sure you are able to receive our regular email bulletins.
If you would like to discuss any of the above or if there any other areas that I can support you with please get in touch.
If you need to respond to this email please do not reply but contact Billy Green separately