I am pleased and excited to be following on in the Presidency of Chelsea Little Athletics Association after our 40th year of Competition and our Gala year of celebrations. We can all reflect on the past season as having been one of great achievements and fun for all of our athletes, either at Club, State or Pacific School Games (National/International) levels. As Panthers, Roadrunners and Redbacks, under the umbrella of CLAC, forge forward into the 41st year of competition, they do so with a renewed sense of sporting spirit and with a reformed structure. Goals are in place for delivering a well run club.

The importance of having chosen athletics for your summer sport and fitness is that athletics is heaps of fun whilst working your whole body. The skills used are the foundation to many other sports. Through athletics you build fitness, strengthen your inner core, gain co-ordination, speed and agility. When the end of the season comes around your body will be ready for the rigors of Soccer, Netball, Aussie Rules and other sporting choices. Some people believe that within athletics there is at least one event that you will excel in!

Also, don’t forget the mental and emotional aspect of concentration, determination, persistent and willpower alongside tears of joy and excitement with your success.  Some weeks you will experience struggles but with being self-driven and trying your best - and that is all that is ever asked of you as an athlete - you will personally achieve. As athletes, you have of us parents, coaches and committee members, our full support!!!

During next year there is the Summer Junior Olympics in Singapore, secondly you will see our adult Australian athletes make their way to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, and thirdly we will have seen The Masters Games with our senior adult athletes. Athletics is a wonderful sport as it stretches continually for a lifetime, so what you learn and experience now as a junior athlete you will be able to use in competition as a young and senior adult.

Thank you to all our parents who have taken up the mantle and challenge of delivering athletics in Chelsea who work diligently, and display 100% commitment; from spiking in the sand to officiating on one of the Committees. Your wonderful sense of spirit, enthusiasm and passion is tangible and will be seen and felt by the all most important people in our lives – OUR CHILDREN, OUR ATHLETES!  We do all this foremost and fundamentally for them.

I wish you all heaps of encouragement and a winner of a season and please feel free to approach me to have a chat, or just for a laugh, as we enjoy season 2009/10.

Already I can hear the cheers and roaring from the crowds bouncing off the velodrome walls as our Chelsea Little Athletes compete on our proud Natural Grassed Running Track –

YOU GO CHELSEA 60!!!

Claudette MacDonald