Dear Eastern Suburbs Zone Athletes, Parents and Carers,
Well done to all our athletes at Zone as well as our parents, carers and coaches. We had 188 athletes in 639 events at zone and it was great to host Zone at ES Marks.
Our under 7s don’t progress to Regionals but they took home lots of medals and performed well at what was probably their first big competition. They will all be better for the experience and it’s easy to forget that many of our champion athletes started the same way.
We have 140 athletes or 82% of our eligible Zone athletes progressing to Regionals in 352 events. The Eastern Suburbs progression list is attached. We also had four relay teams progress with the Junior Boys, Junior Girls and Senior Boys winning and the Senior girls coming second running with two U15s and no U17. The Junior boys broke their record from last year and the Junior Girls and Senior Boys weren’t far off the records. It is great to see our Senior teams performing well after so many years of good junior teams.
One other impressive statistic is that Eastern Suburbs had more first places than any club at zone as per the table attached. We also had a massive 19 more 1st places than Balmain to secure a top of the table finish. Our 188 athletes achieved top 3 places in 189 events. For context Balmain had 249 athletes at Zone so 61 more than us. ESLAC on top of the “medal” table is a great achievement. Even 5 years ago we would not have thought that this was possible.
We also had Marnie (long jump), Charles (80m hurdles) and Callie (400m) break zone records as well as Spencer, Ethan, Bertie and Charles break the record in the Junior boy’s relay. Well done, breaking zone records is a real achievement. For the record breakers I have your $50 vouchers ready to present upon your return from holidays.
Thanks to all of the parent volunteers and our paid crew for the work over the weekend. The BBQ was a massive undertaking too and it seemed to go well. Thanks Paul, Grant and Allison for taking charge at the BBQ for us and to all of the parent helpers. Our usual Friday nights prepared us well for the big crowds.
Regionals is on at Sylvania on the 3rd and 4th of February. The program will be finalised in early January. At this stage it is a 2-day program, I am just not sure on which day of the program the 3km event will be held yet.
In my experience Regional results suffer where the athlete doesn’t maintain their training over the break. So please keep some training up over the next 3-4 weeks, especially if you want to qualify for State. Our ESLAC coaches are back on Monday 15 January and our usual Friday night event is on again on the 19th of January. There is no event Friday 26th of January (Australia day) with Regionals the following weekend.
For those that want more competition, there is State Combined Carnival on the 2nd and 3rd of March in Newcastle. The registrations for this event are open now. It is great carnival for our athletes that are talented over the running, throw and jumps events.
Finally, ESLAC is also affiliated with Athletics NSW (ANSW) and this year they are offering a separate Regional Program. ANSW is a separate entity to Little Athletics and used to be called Senior Athletics. Our U13-U18 athletes used to join Senior Clubs under dual membership rights to compete at State Juniors and Nationals. Now they can stay at ESLAC and compete in our colours at these events. There is a $40 fee to join the ANSW and they will be hosting a Regional Carnival at SOPAC on the 17th and 18th of February for our Region (Sydney East Clubs). You will have to enter via the Athletics NSW site and the entries won’t open until January. Under this program you pay fees when you register for the events unlike our Little Athletics programs where we charge a small fee for Zone and Regionals and no fees for State. There is no Zone equivalent for the ANSW program.
Under the ANSW program they will also host a Youth State Titles with progression based on performance at the ANSW Regional program. The ANSW State will be on the 14th to 17th of March at SOPAC a week before State Little Athletics.
To access these ANSW Regional and State programs you need to go to the Athletics NSW site and register. You choose a club (Eastern Suburbs Little Athletics) and complete the ANSW online registration form which will cost $40. Only those competitors that want to compete in the ANSW programs need to do this.
There is the normal State Juniors for our U13 to U20 athletes under the ANSW program which is on at SOPAC on the 7th to the 10th of March. Many of our talented U13-U17 athletes use this event to achieve qualifying times for the National Junior Championships.
Again, well done to our Zone team that was our biggest and now most successful ever. Let’s aim for great results at Regionals and for a record number of athletes to progress to State Little Athletics this season.
See you back at the track in the new year for our Friday night 19th of January 2024 event.
Drew Richardson
ESLAC President
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