Trying something new this year, we held our club champs events for juniors aged 7+ on Sunday 17th March, rather than as part of a series of club nights.
7-9 year olds completed 4 events over the course of the morning (100m, 400m/800m, long jump and shot put), and 10+ did high jump as well.
It was great to see you all out there giving it heaps - including some of the senior sprinters and even the parents had a go - congratulations to our speedy parent champs Tony and Gayleen!
Event results
7-9 year olds
10+ year olds
Calculating the champs
Of course for there to be championships, there must be champions!
This year, we calculated overall results on a simple points-based system for our 7-9 athletes and for 10+ we used IAAF scoring tables for combined events - here's Nanne with the explanation:
This is a way to be able to compare and add up performances of very different events. For each event there is a formula that gives a result in points. They made the formulas such that 1000 points is equal to the Olympic Record (of 1912!!!) and 0 points is what an untrained schoolkid would make of it. The IAAF does not say HOW OLD an untrained schoolkid, whether this is about a Y1 or a Y13. We think that a lot of younger untrained schoolkids could not even complete for instance an 800m, so probably the zero point was chosen for somewhat older schoolkids.
Do not get demotivated if you have a very low score on some event despite training; by eating spinach and playing outside you will automatically get better!
We do know that the tables are used for Combined Events for 11YO, so we thought we could use it for 10YO at the club champs. Indeed there are no separate formulas for kids! The IAAF has as objective that the system can be used for beginners, juniors and top athletes. This is great because you can use the same points system all your athletics career comparing with your younger self and across events. There are only different tables for males and females, that's it!
If you want to read more about this, here's the entire history.
So who comes out top on points?
All will be revealed at prizegiving, where we award our historic cups to age group winners as well as some special recipients. Don't forget to RSVP so we know who's coming.
It's always nice to hold an event at the track, and the combined-event morning format worked well, so we'll look to repeat this. Feedback from parents and kids was that champs felt like more of an event this year, and it was awesome to see the great performances, efforts and support on the day - well done to you all!