The following members were elected to the committee at the recent AGM. Please give them your full support throughout the year:

President: Graeme Olden
Vice-President: Adam Pepper
Treasurer: Angela Robbie
Secretary: Julie Milner
Committee Members: Colin Organ
Joan Hines
Dale Bickham
Tom Waters

Box Hill Athletic Club operates the Barlow Foundation as a registered project with the Australian Sports Foundation for the purpose of supporting elite athletes and coaches in state league interclub competition. The project makes grants to athletes and coaches from tax deductible donations made to the foundation.

Proposed distribution of Barlow Foundation grants for 2000/01 season

• $200 Reimbursement of expenses to the leading Female State League points scorer
• $200 Reimbursement of expenses to the leading Male State League points scorer
• $200 Reimbursement of expenses to the coach whose athletes (including both male and female) score the greatest combined total of State League points.
• Payment of Athletics Victoria membership for the following season for any athlete who scores 100 or more State League points.

A donation form is attached.

All donations are tax deductible.

If you have any questions about the Barlow Foundation, I can be contacted on 9813 3597 or via email ( colo@bigpond.com )

The much loved pole vault official Jack Hamilton passed away on Tuesday 15^th June while in hospital recovering from heart bypass surgery. Jack was a life member of the Box Hill Athletic Club and reached the age of 79.

Although in the last few years the effort of running the competitions was becoming difficult for Jack, he always made sure that things ran well.

The thing about Jack was that he took a great interest in the performance of the vaulters, and with so much experience he understood the event like few other pole vault officials were able to.

When some one vaulted well Jack was genuinely excited, although all the pole vaulters recall this getting him into trouble on one occasion. After one of Emma George's world records there were pictures of him on the TV news that night jumping for joy. He was latter ticked off for this by the senior officials.

A small group of Box Hill vaulters attended Jacks funeral where we caught a small glimpse of the diverse other parts of his life. It was also the first funeral I have attended that the words "pole vault" were mentioned in the eulogy.

He will be greatly missed at Box Hill on a Saturday those summer afternoons. But he will never be forgotten.

Dale Bickam, recent addition to our committee, has taken over the handling of the club records. So if anyone feels the list needs an update, eg in the underage vault sections, then contact him at:

9251 7236 or

Dale is also doing a PhD in PE at Deakin University for which he requires human test subjects. (Insert evil laugh here) He is looking for middle distance runners to further develop an anaerobic capacity test for running. Volunteers will be able to find out detailed physiologic information about themselves including their VO2max. If you are interested I think he has a few spots left so feel free to contact him.

The Box Hill Athletic Club had a strong contingent at the Stawell Gift this year. Athletes included Andrew Wilcox, Tom Waters, Marcus Tierney, Yaron Levy, Wally Pasquali, Tim Cherry and probably a few others that I don’t remember. Hey, if you were there you would understand. Spectators included Chris Robbie, the entire Riiordan family, Jason Thompson, Danielle Wyke and the Monash crew with Cameron Baker, Fiona Canabucanananan and Tim Renowden.

If you have never been to Stawell, then don’t head up there this weekend. There is only one time of the year to go and it is when 15,000 other people all decide that it would be good to rock up as well. You can see Olympic athletes getting absolutely hammered in the caravan park, the only place to stay as if you booked early enough to get a room in a motel you are just too organised. You can see the Wolinskis from Sydney. And you can also see some athletics.

Highlights of the weekend included:

• Marcus Tierney coming in second in the two mile after leading the whole way and going out drinking for the previous three nights.
• Heidi Riiordan’s form in the fun run.
• Tom Waters realizing that 6^th place was not going to win him any money, kicking to come in 5^th only to be passed on the line and end up with nothing in the Herb Hededmann.
• Danielle Wyke’s companion Adrian Grace on the dance floor at the Brix.
• But most of all, all of the antics that just about everyone, especially the Monash Aths crew in their AUG warm up, got up to each and every night (surviving on an average of less then 5 hours sleep a night for over a week is really dum) that we can’t say as what happens on the trip, stays on the trip.

Stawell is the premier professional athletics carnival in Australia and should be a must on everyone’s calendar. See you there next year!!

Registrations are now due for the 2000-2001 season. A Club membership should be completed and returned to the Club Registrar as soon as possible to make sure that you are registered in time for the winter season.

Note that registration fees have increased slightly from last year due to the fact that GST must be paid on 9 months of the membership which equates to a 7.5% equivalent tax which has been levied on the registration fee charged by Athletics Victoria. In order to minimise the impact on membership fees to our members, we have decided not to register with the ATO to collect GST which means that we do not have to apply the GST to the services which we provide, however the Club does have to pay GST on anything that we purchase so we will have to pass this cost on to the members which means that fees have to rise, but not by the full 7.5%.

The Club is in the process of applying to receive an ABN from the Australian Taxation Office so that users of services that we provide (i.e. ground hirers) will not be required to retain withholding tax. It is likely that in the future we will have to register for GST as our income is close to the $100,000 threshold, however for the present we have chosen to minimise our administrative costs and the cost to our members by not registering.

Box Hill pole vaulter Bridgid Isworth is currently gallivanting around Europe in a search for an Olympic A Qualifier. Regular email is keeping us updated with her progress.

She is based in Germany and coincidently is staying only ten minutes walk away from Emma George, former Box Hill athlete, out of the whole of Europe.

In Regensburg on Friday Bridgid vaulted 3.92 in poor conditions (Kym Howe, a West Australian, vaulted the same height in this meet). In Freistätt on Sunday she had a fall in the warm up and had to pull out of the comp. She is OK and will compete again this Friday.

A disappointing start to Bridgid's European competitions, but she still has 3 weeks to get things together. The good thing is that she is being looked after by the German agent Ralf Iwen very well.

We wish all the best to Bridge and hope she had fun jumping in that town square vault you lucky girl you!!!

To enable general maintenance and painting works to be carried out in readiness for the next track season, a working bee is to be held at the clubrooms from 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm on Saturday 29 July 2000.

Tasks to be completed include painting of seats, repair and replacement of hurdle tops, repair of doors and benches damaged by vandals, cleaning and vacuuming of the clubrooms, toilets and showers, painting of the shot put stop boards, trimming weeds from around the track and other general cleaning and maintenance tasks.

It only takes a couple of hours from a large group to make a big difference to the track and facilities, however if we only get the same few people turning up, then the work will not get done and the facilities will continue to fall into a state of disrepair. Make sure you don't miss out on the free lunch and come along to do your bit.

The canteen needs to be opened for school competition on Saturday 19 August, 26 August, 2^nd September, 9 September between 8.30 and 12 noon and on Tuesday 5 September between 4.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. It is important that the canteen opens as the schools requesting the canteen are large ones and the revenue obtained will be beneficial to the Club.

If so please telephone Angela Robbie on 9898 3052 (H).

The Club ran a canteen at the cross country meet at Bundoora and after cooking and selling approximately 180 hamburgers, seventy sausages, chocolate bars and drinks the takings were $890.00. Approximately $500.00 will be profit to the Club.

Thanks to Julie Milner, Val Armstrong, Jenny Hassett, Graeme Olden and Stewart Livingston who all helped on the day with the running of the canteen.

Former Box Hill athlete Andrew Vearing says hello to all the people he left behind in cold wet Melbourne when he went to Perth. He says:

"How are thing going at the Box Hill club. I’m sure much colder than here in Perth. Training in Perth is great, but does not have the same club atmosphere as Box Hill. If you did not know I am now engaged and due to be married in March of next year, to Nicole Wilson. She took the plunge and moved to Perth with me in May of last year. Hopefully I will be going to the trials, but it will depend how I jump over the next few weeks.

Say hi to every one at the club."

I am sure he would appreciate any email anyone over here wants to send him. Write to:

And try not to cry too hard girls that Andrew, aptly named "Wonderboy", is getting married. At least it gives the rest of us mere mortals a chance with the ladies. Also Andrew, please come back and run 110h and throw javelin for us in State league next season!! We miss you!!!

With the changes to the Athletics Victoria program this year, the annual Club 5000 metre Handicap race was run on Saturday June 24 at the Bennettswood course adjacent to Gardiner’s Creek. 26 starters and around 10 supporters joined us at the start. We were fortunate that it didn’t rain, as it was overcast and windy. This year’s times were not as quick as expected, possibly due to the weather.

Last year Marcus Tierney recorded the fastest-ever time (14:34) taking the lead near the finish, but being overhauled by Tom Waters in a tremendous finishing burst. Neither Marcus nor Tom were competing this year. Both would have winced should they have been running when they were provided with their allocated marks this year, but both decided to pass up the opportunity to test out their reserves. However, there were the usual number of complaints from others about the ungenerous attitude (read fair assessment) provided by the handicapper in allocating predicted times.

The race started with "Go" but the first runners, Richard Sloane and Jos De Bruin actually departed on 2 m. 40 with all other runners setting off in the next seven minutes. Eliza Eddy and Michael Bourne were prominent after one lap had been run but it was evident that Jocelyn Keage, Phil Pelgrim and Graeme Olden were all travelling well as they completed their first circuit. Andrew White, to whom the handicapper had had to reassign a new mark at short notice, on hearing that he had run 4:18 for a 1500m and 9:52 for a 3000m, was also looking very strong as he passed through.

Eventually Jocelyn Keage emerged in the distance, clearly in the lead, and ran strongly to the line in an outstanding time of 17:40 for 5000m on our measured and lightly undulating course. Jocelyn looks to have a really promising future, and she ran extremely impressively on the day. Eighteen seconds later Michael Bourne, twice a winner of the race, finished in second place, in a very authoritative run for a youngster of 14. Andrew White finished a further 19 seconds behind in third place, also in a very encouraging performance, recording a fast 17:17 time.

Following the first three placegetters was a veritable procession of the next sixteen runners, separated by very slim margins in a number of cases. Nineteen of the 26 runners finished within two minutes of each other (with three starters just using the run as a training run). One amazing effort was produced by Annabel Hosken, who staged a titanic sprint battle with Graeme Olden, the fastest finisher (15 m. 21). She sprinted flat out for the last 100 metres of the race side by side with Graeme and was only eclipsed by 5 centimetres. She will surely have an enormous future in distance running if she can replicate that finishing form in Winter races. We were pleased to see Chris Bunney competing again, after an enforced lay-off.

For a full set of results, refer to the Box Hill Athletic Club Web Page:

1. Jocelyn Keage 17 m. 40
2. Michael Bourne 19 m. 08
3. Andrew White 17 m. 17
4. Phil Pelgrim 16 m. 18
5. Eliza Eddy 20 m. 02
6. Graeme Olden 15 m. 21

Club sponsor Banksia Sports Clinic has moved to 1062 Heidelberg Rd, Ivanhoe (Just next door to Pizza Hut we are told). Could all athletes please take note of their new address and phone number: 9499 8887.

A copy of the annual report tabled at this year's Annual General Meeting is now posted on the Box Hill Athletic Club Web Page. If you missed the AGM then please download the report from:

Donors who are uncertain of their position should seek their own professional advice. The Barlow Foundation 980016 is a project of the Box Hill Athletics Club Inc.. The Project is approved and conducted under the charter of the ASF.