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Another lesson in athletics....

It's been a while since I did a blog and the last one was a bit of an athletics moan. So here we go again, but its more of making a point rather than having a moan.

A few weeks ago one of the committee members at Chester-le-Street Athletics Club collared me and asked what the difference was between Houghton Harriers and Chester-le-Street. I was reasonably diplomatic and explained that Houghton was a very welcoming atmosphere with much more of a team spirit, much better communication and no signs of a clique. There's nothing really complicated about what happens at Houghton - its just being approachable, getting the kids together at the start of the session and doing Parish Notices on who's run & how they've done, plus you hand a flyer out for upcoming events and remind people as the dates get closer.

Tricky it ain't.

The difference in the approaches of the 2 clubs couldn't have been clearer following the Park View School trip to the ESAA Cross Country Cup Final last weekend. It was a great achievement for the 6 girls in the team & it was an experience that hopefully they never forget.

So what's made a difference ? Well, on Friday night Houghton put a post on their Facebook page to wish all 6 girls good luck & named all 6 of them - 4 of them run for Houghton, 1 from Chester-le-Street & 1 is unattached. I thought it was a nice touch, especially mentioning the non-Houghton athletes. I then noticed on Saturday morning that Chester-le-Street had put a post on Facebook but that just wished their own athlete good luck.

In my last blog, I described Chester-le-Street as having a very insular approach and their Facebook post from Saturday proved my point. The bit that's also not a good statement for them is that you've got a school from Chester-le-Street that makes a National Final with a team of 6, of which only 1 runs for the local athletics club. Having said that, the 4 girls from Houghton all used to run for Chester-le-Street and have all moved for different reasons - maybe they're a bit embarrassed about it, but my insular comment seems proven again.

Since the weekend, I see that Chester-le-Street have had to cancel the Christmas party for the kids due to low numbers - could it be another sign of the insular approach & they've not let everybody know that it was on ? I know my kid is too old, but I've not seen or heard anything mentioned to our group about said party - so its little wonder they've not got enough.

As I said in the last blog - I'm always willing to talk, but as nobody has discussed the last one (back in August), I can't see it happening. I suspect that they don't want to know, but the number of kids you see going elsewhere must eventually raise some eyebrows somewhere..........

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