Annual General Meeting

The 2004 Annual General Meeting for the Box Hill Athletic Club was held in the club rooms at 7:30 pm on Tuesday 20 July 2004. The committee presented the annual report to members in attendance, which highlights the wonderful successes enjoyed by the Club over the past year.

 The following members were elected onto the committee for the coming year:

              President:                       Graeme Olden
            Vice President:               Adam Pepper
            Treasurer:                      Angela Robbie
            Secretary:                      Julie Milner
            Committee:                    Simon Bromley
                                                Joan Hines
                                                Colin Organ

 The committee has lost a number of members over the past year and it was most disappointing that no new members joined the committee at the Annual General Meeting. For the future success of the Club it is imperative that we continue to recruit new members on to the committee so if anyone would like to assist with the management of one of the most successful sporting clubs in Australia, please contact a committee member to volunteer your services.

A copy of the annual report is available for downloading from the Club web site for those who were unable to attend the meeting...Annual Report

 2004 – 2005 Track Season

After many meetings and a series of proposals from Athletics Victoria for significant changes to competition for the coming season, the end result is that there will be very little change to the competition structure from past years. There will however be some changes which are summarised below:

·          ‘Interclub’ has been renamed ‘Shield’

·          The Knox and Glenhuntly venues have merged with competition being shared between these two venues, as well as Frankston and Mentone. Ringwood and Nunawading have been transferred to Box Hill which will make competition at Box Hill much stronger, however it will necessitate some changes to the program to ensure that the program does not become too much longer.

·          Two rounds of the Shield will be held at other venues – one at Doncaster and one at Ringwood.

·          Competition will be run on a graded basis rather than heats being determined by which club and team you are in. This will make the scoring much more complicated and it has not yet been determined how this will be handled.

 Competition starts on Saturday 16^th October with Round 1 of the Shield competition at Box Hill. The hammer throw will again commence at 12:00 noon and track events at 1:00pm. Full details are available on the AV web site at http://www.athsvic.org.au.

 If you have not yet registered, please send in your registration form to the registrar, Angela Robbie as soon as possible so that you will be registered in time for the start of the track season. Registration forms can be downloaded from the Club web site at http://www.boxhillathleticclub.org. 

Stadium Sports Sponsorship

The Box Hill Athletic Club is pleased to announce a new Gold Sponsor of the club for season 2004/5 in Stadium Sports, Box Hill. Stadium Sports are located at Box Hill Centro, Box Hill Shopping Centre, Box Hill. The store is only a few kilometers from the track. Corey and Scott who are the owners would like to develop a long standing relationship with the club.

 To enable this to happen all the members must embrace the sponsorship arrangement. Stadium Sports are providing 10% discount cards for all members which will be posted out prior to the commencement of the season. This discount is off everything in the store from runners to equipment, apparel and other footwear. Please drop in and say hello to Corey or Scott and present your card if you are looking for any sporting goods. Ph. 9897 4563.

ZATOPEK  MEET AT BOX HILL

With the track at Olympic Park being resurfaced and out of action until next year, it has been necessary to find a different venue at which to hold this year’s Zatopek meeting. We have recently been informed by Athletics Australia that the meeting will be held at Box Hill in the evening of Saturday 4 December 2004.

This is a wonderful opportunity for the Club to show that we are capable of holding one of the most prestigious track meets held in Australia each year. However, it will require a lot of work to prepare for the meeting and run the meet on the night so we will require the assistance of as many members as possible. If you are available to help in any way, please contact Graeme Olden on 9885 0890 (h) or by email at golden@sprint.net.au.

 Hopefully Athletics Australia will consider holding the event at Box Hill again in future years if we can make a success of this year’s event.

Building Works Update

It is most exciting to be able to report that the building works at the clubrooms are almost complete. Painting is now well advanced so it appears that the new facilities will be ready for use within the next month or two.

However, unfortunately it appears that we will not be allowed to use the new rooms until disabled access is provided to the first floor.

This is extremely frustrating as the City of Whitehorse and their architect had previously assured the Club that a separate disabled access was not required to the first floor area. Two building permits for the work had been previously issued for the work that did not include any special disabled access requirement. The current building surveyor has stated that he will not issue a Certificate of Occupancy until we have provided disabled access to the first floor so we are currently investigating the options for installation of a ramp or lift to provide this access.

We face a huge challenge to overcome this obstacle as the Club is already in debt, having borrowed $65,000 to help pay for the current works. We have applied for grants to complete the work but even if successful, it will be some time until we can complete the design and proceed with construction. The committee is doing all in our power to find some way around this impasse and will keep members informed of developments. 

World Junior Championships

The World Junior Championships in were held in Grosseto, Italy from 12^th to 18^th July 2004 and we were most fortunate to have one of our members, Ronnie Buckley representing Australia in the discus at these championships. After winning the World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada last year, Ronnie was keen to repeat the feat in the Under 20 championships this year, however he had the disadvantage of having to compete against boys a year or more older. 

Ronnie qualified comfortable for the final but unfortunately was not able to quite reproduce his best form from last summer and finished in 7^th place with a best throw of 58.11 m. 

The men’s discus throw at the World Junior Championships was remarkable in that the winner, Hadadi Ehsan, was the first Iranian athlete to win a work championship medal of any colour in either junior or senior championships. 

Ronnie in action in Italy

BUY A BRICK

The Club’s tax deductible Barlow Fund also includes a separate building fund. With additional funds needed to be able to fund the Stage II Pavilion Upgrade (upstairs extension), donations to this fund are urgently required. Any donations made to this building fund will be directed solely towards the club room upgrade. Now is an excellent time to help the Club to fund your new club rooms and reduce your tax bill. Any donation of $100 or more will be recognised with a plaque recording your donation prominently displayed on a brick in the new clubrooms. Donation forms can be downloaded from the Club’s web site - www.boxhillathleticclub.org - or obtained from Colin Organ – phone 9813 3597 or email at colo@bigpond.com. 

Barlow foundation

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. These grants have played a significant part in the success of the State League teams over the past few seasons and the Club is committed to continuing to provide these opportunities for our State League athletes.  

The distribution of Barlow Foundation grants made at the presentation night for the 2003/04 season was:

·          $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 (both male and female) score the greatest combined total of State League points.  

To help ensure the continued success of our State League teams, we are requesting donations to help fund these grants. All donations are tax deductible. If you would like to obtain a donation form to send in a donation, or have any questions about the Barlow Foundation, please contact Colin Organ on 9813 3597 or via email (colo@bigpond.com). Alternatively you may wish to download a form directly from the Club’s web site at http://www.boxhillathleticclub.org.

Whitehorse Gift

The Box Hill Athletic Club is once again holding the Whitehorse Gift Carnival this year. The program for the competition has been changed from previous years as the Whitehorse Gift will be held in conjunction with an Athletics Victoria Allcomers Meet to be held at Box Hill on Saturday 11^th December 2004. The competition will feature a series of ‘PB’ meets for all AV members, as well as the Victorian Mile Championship, a mile handicap run by the VAL and the 400m Whitehorse Gift race. 

Further details of the meeting will be available on the club website in the next few months.

A Story from Athens

For the first time in 16 years, the Box Hill Athletic Club had a member competing at the Olympic Games, with Steven Hooker representing Australia in the pole vault. 

Demonstrating great Club spirit and support for Steven, a large group of Box Hill members and friend left the temperate Melbourne winter to travel to the heat of Athens to support Steve and also share the excitement of attending the Olympics, even if on the other side of the fence! Mark, Julie and Jessica Stewart, Chris O’Connor, Fiona Buchanan, Rosie Ditton, Graham Crouch, Julie Milner, Michael Power, Graeme Olden and Frances Moss were all in the stadium watching while Steve completed a great first clearance at 5.30m to briefly lead the competition in the pole vault qualifying. Coach Mark Stewart provided the following analysis of how the competition progressed from here… 

Clearly Steve and I are disappointed with the result. How ever he competed well, I am afraid it was just one of those things that happens in pole vault (I explain for pole vault people). 

Good clearance at 5.30.

1st attempt at 5.50 too close take off (running well).

2nd at 5.50 pole too soft (14.0)

3rd went up to big pole, 13.6 (never used before) stands in to 60 from 80, but the big pole was still too soft, Steve was in shape. Had we left the stands on 80 he would have been over 5.50 and in the mix for the heights for to make the final.

It was a wonderful thrill for those of us at the stadium that night to see Steve representing Australia. And it was very stressful for those of us left at home who, due to Channel 7’s refusal to show field events, were relegated to watching the whole thing on the computer. I have never been as stressed as watching the 30 second clock count down for a screen refresh, only for no new results to come up. 

Before Steven left Australia, a presentation was made to him at the Movie Night where Graeme presented Steve with a football on behalf of the club. Many of you may have followed the media coverage of the games, and heard that an Australian snuck a footy into the Closing Ceremony. I am proud to say this was our Steve, and apparently, the best game of kick to kick ever ensued. 

Congratulations to both Steven and Mark on a fantastic year. We are all sure that they will both learn from this experience and continue on with another successful season this summer. 

Steve in action in Athens

EDITORS NOTE

Hands up everyone who watched at least some of the Olympics? OK, now hands up everyone who was disappointed with the coverage? Ahh, I see a similar number of hands. Now many of you may try to tell me that I should expect to be disappointed. That I should expect to see 37 replays of every Australian medal winning performance. That I should expect to see no coverage of events without Australians. 

But what I want to gripe about, is that anyone who is up watching the Olympics at 5:00am, either has no life, or actually wants to see the events that are scheduled at that time. I can not for the life of me understand why Channel 7 would insist on showing replays of basketball games at 5:00am when anyone who actually wanted to see it, saw it at 11:00pm when it was on live. The only field events I saw in the entire Channel 7 telecast was one female triple jump, one men’s pole vault from qualifying, the women’s long jump and Roy and HG doing funny commentary over footage of the men’s hammer. 

I had friends saying: “Did you see the men’s pole vault comp this morning at 11:00am?” I said, “No, cos I was sleeping due to being awake from 3:00am to 7:00am when it was meant to be on.” And why does Channel 7 replay team sport matches that SBS showed live instead of showing live track and field? 

Needless to say I was a very sleep deprived angry young man for two weeks. Well, at least Cathy Freeman only spoke when she was directly asked a question, somewhat nullifying my campaign to have her removed from the Olympic broadcast team. 

To submit articles either see Cameron Baker or el Presidente Graeme Olden down at the track or email Cameron on vaultcam@hotmail.com.

Doug Grinsted

Former Box Hill member and respected coach, Doug Grinsted passed away earlier this year (12 April 2004) after losing his battle with bowel cancer. The following extract is taken from his obituary in the Herald Sun on May 14^th. 

Doug was born on 24 November 1924 and spent 9 hard years growing up in St Vincent de Paul’s orphanage. He joined the RAAF in World War II and later worked on the docks before moving into teaching. He and his wife Mary had three sons – Paul, Garry and Ross, and a daughter, Louise. In 1967, Paul encouraged Doug to attend Surrey Park to join the legendary Ron Clarke for a running clinic. From this clinic, Doug formed and coached a club called the Box Hill Little Amateur Athletic Club. When Little Athletics came to Box Hill in 1968, Doug was the inaugural registrar for the centre and through his efforts it won almost every event each week. 

Doug took his first two sons to Box Hill seniors in 1970 and became the junior coach of the club, which under his guidance won its association age premiership for the next five years. 

Doug coached his son Paul to win the Associated Public Schools Open 800 m title in equal record time. Paul also won the 1500 m in record-breaking time, being pushed to the limit by Robert de Castella in 1975. Later in the year Paul won the Australian Schoolboys and Australian Junior 1500 m titles. 

After the family moved to Moorabbin, Doug became the middle distance coach at Mentone Amateur Athletic Club and later at Sandringham Athletic Club through until 2002. 

Our deepest sympathy is extended to the Grinsted family. 

CLUB MERCHANDISE

For a limited time there are some "State League" Long Sleeve Training Tops now available for only $20. Also a new order of Club Tracksuit tops has just arrived so get in early before they all go for $85.