As 2011 nears to a close, I think we can safely say the Junior Section have once again been very busy as this year saw us rolling out the England Athletics 365 program, to further enhance and extend the opportunities for our juniors to flourish, and we had our first English National Cross Country Champion in George Elliot. 

We were pictured in Runner’s World magazine, on an article for Children’s running, and our Club Mark accreditation highlighted as an outstanding case study on the England Athletics web site.  

We now have strong club/school links with Eastwood Academy, which means we can use their brand new £1M Olympic track for our training sessions, and we are planning events throughout 2012 to utilise this great facility.  

Club membership stands at 80+ children, with a further 30+ on the waiting list.  

The Club was also very proud to have been nominated for the England Athletics “Development Club of the Year 2011”, and our latest venture into organising Sportshall events was on 12th November when 80+ juniors were competing, from Essex clubs and schools with 18 of our own juniors performing extremely well with a great chance of being selected to represent Essex at the Regional finals early in the new year.

What a great start to 2012 that will be for them and the Junior Club!  

As ever, all I can do is continue to thank the pool of volunteer Junior Leaders/Coaches who make the training sessions happen every week, and ensure all our hosted competitive junior events are run at such a high professional standard.  

They are all testimony to why the junior club is the success that it is, so on your behalf I thank them all.

 As we continue to develop Benfleet Juniors, we are  planning events and competitions for 2012 already.

With this in mind, and knowing we will have a very busy next year, with further developments in Quadkids and Sportshall, and the Cross Country Season, 

we would like some feedback from you, and your children.  

In this way we can tailor the plans for the benefit of the majority of our members.