Chiltern Cross Country League; Secretary Report

Presented at the AGM held at Tring Cricket Club on Monday 04/09/17

I am now starting my second year in the voluntary role of committee secretary for the Chiltern XC League and have had lots of support from long standing committee members, I hope to continue the role and be supportive to the committee and the clubs within the league.

Planned attendance for tonight’s AGM as per email notifications:

Attending / Apologies
Beds & Co / Brackley & District RC
Redway Runners / Wellingborough & District AC
MKAC / Buckingham & Stowe
Gade Valley Harriers
Bearbrook
Dacorum & Tring
LBAC
Queens Park Harriers

At the start of 2016/17 season we had 37 clubs take part in the league, with Cookham, Amptill and Olney who had left having participated in previous years. I have no formal notification of clubs withdrawing from the league this season. We welcome new clubs in the 2017/18, Milton Keynes Distance Project and Olney returning to join us for the whole season. The RAF and Oxford University will be joining us at the second match hosted at Tear Drop Lakes Milton Keynes.

Communication:

Communication betweenclubs ispredominantly through email and the club website. Using Email is only as successful as my contact list is accurate, keeping track of changes of a continually changing list can be difficult. I have many emails ‘bounce back’ unsent. This is partially a web based problem but more than often it’s because the email is no longer in use.

For many clubs we only one or two contacts, which caused some issues in contacting clubs when there had been issues with award presentations going to the wrong recipients and teams (this was due incorrect scoring totals of teams and individuals arising from number changes mid season) emails were not answered and it made contacting clubs difficult.

It would be helpful if all clubs would kindly email me with updated contact information, even if you think I have correct details, I can then collate accurate information for all clubs this season.

Please email with heading “contact details for (insert club name)”

Please provide all names and email addresses of individuals with your club who are associated with your cross country teams and let me know ‘who is who’ e.g.your treasurer, so we know who to invoice if appropriate. A contact address would also be helpful and only used if I need to post information to clubs.

Presentations:

There were some issues with presentations last season resulting from late changes by team managers and individuals wearing new numbers inthe last race who were in contention for age group prizes. Most of these were rectified; problems with communication were a barrier to resolving them. To avoid issues again, particularly with junior teams, I plan to order additional spare medals centres so that if needed, I can easily dispatch replacement medals quickly and avoid clubs having the ‘swap’ prizes via post. The personalised medal centres for the league take some weeks to prepare and dispatch and are printed in batches of 100, hence costly if I have to order 4 to replace medals where errors occurred. Having only helped one year with ordering awards I hope to streamline this process and avoid future issues. Bill O’Connor will be assisting with presentations this year as I will unable to attend the final match in February 2018 due to family commitments that weekend.

Additional medal orders:

Feedback would be useful from clubs who paid to have additional medals for their teams. I sent information to clubs of how to order their medals direct from suppliers ‘Running Imp’ who we use for awards, and I then dispatched the personalised centres. This seemed to work well. The only changes I can foresee for this season is that I will include information so that clubs also pay for individual medal centres so the league recoup the full cost. They are however economical at around 35p each, this cost is reduced when bulk orders are made.

Trophies:

We are trying recall all the league trophies so these can be catalogued and update for historical purposes. It would be helpful if clubs, whom won the shields/trophies, return them engraved and polished. We will of course do this on clubs behalf if this had been overlooked. We hope that clubs are proud of their achievements and that the trophies and shields are maintained in good condition.

Wishing all the participating clubs a successful and fun season and I welcome any suggestions related to this role which will support clubs and improve the league

Kind regards

Kerry Cooper of Redway Runners

Committee secretary Chiltern XC league