You may not have been aware but last year we won a City of Worcester Sports award for Contribution to Physical activity. http://www.sportworcester.org.uk/sport-awards/sport-awards-2015/
https://bpj.org.uk/2015/09/club-receives-award-at-the-2015-city-of-worcester-sport-awards/http://www.sportworcester.org.uk/sport-awards/sport-awards-2015/

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/13772254.Glittering_City_of_Worcester_Sport_Awards_winners/?ref=arc

Well this year I would like to think we have only gone and excelled ourselves again, bagging another award, this time winning the:

‘COMMUNITY SPORTS AWARD’

In a quirky twist to what was supposed to be an application for Club of the Year, we were nevertheless somewhat surprised and delighted to be the recipients of this accolade. Reliably informed by the administrative staff post the award ceremony, we were reassured that this was not a mix up. When reviewing the nominations, the Nomination Board had felt that there were two very strong applications for Club of the Year and felt that it would be difficult to recognise one and not the other, so changed our category to Community Sports Award where they felt that we were stronger.

http://www.sportworcester.org.uk/sport-awards/sport-awards-2016/

Sponsored by Fortis Living, this is awarded to an individual or Club who have made a significant contribution to developing Community Sport whilst also increasing opportunities for people to be more active. Worcester Swimming Club, who secured Club of the Year, must have had a superb application because personally I still feel we exceeded all the criteria, but I guess it just gives us something to aspire to next year. Club of the year is awarded to the club who have achieved accreditation recognition and who have made significant progress ijo-paul-and-in developing opportunities for all over the last twelve months.

Our new chairman, Paul Evans, his lovely wife Jo Evans, kit and clubmark co-ordinator and I collected the award on behalf of the club. It was so fitting considering all of Jo’s hard work on the Clubmark accreditation, outreach programme, becoming a LiRF leader, training to be a CiRF and organising training sessions.
Probably even more rewarding for Jo on a personal level was the fact that one of her students waltzed away with the Disability Sports Person of the Year award. We also received another mention on the night for the work she and her team have done setting up the Outreach Programme to lead visually impaired students at New College, Worcester.

You guys made the application so easy for me cos you are so flipping amazing. I was spoilt for choice and had to filter out some of the information, adding extra documents and caveats to make sure I did not overwhelm them with your individual and collective awesomeness.


The application information is detailed below and I think you’ll agree, we were worthy winners on the strength of all of the achievements.

1. What are the nominees top 3 achievements since August 2015?

2. What commitment has the individual, club or team shown to sport from August 2015?

  • 12 trained guide runners all now on the Find a guide database – https://bpj.org.uk/2016/07/reinforcing-the-clubmark-award/
  • LiRFs x 27 (See above) Supporting news article: https://bpj.org.uk/2016/07/what-can-your-lirf-do-for-you/
  • 4 England Athletics / Mind Mental Health Ambassadors, more than any other UK club https://bpj.org.uk/2016/08/mha/ (This has since changed to 6… https://bpj.org.uk/2016/09/two-more-and-an-event/
  • CiRF x 2 in training
  • 16 week Park Run improver course – (including a detailed plan submitted by Derek Jackson)
  • 5 weeks training at the Visually impaired school in Worcester
  • Kenyan hill sessions – Monday night sessions
  • C25k
  • 5km to 10km and running technique https://bpj.org.uk/2016/09/the-perfect-form/
  • 4 regular weekly training sessions www.bpj.org.uk
  • Dedicated marathon and half marathon training with planned routes in advance, printed maps, route marking with balloons and windmills. Our volunteer Phil also leaves out water (and sometimes sweets!) along the route and usually runs at the back so no-one is left behind. Since taking on the role, the attendance on Sundays has grown substantially, even after the popular Spring marathon training programme

3. What other qualities does the individual, club or team bring to their sport/organisation?

  • The club is more inclusive than it has ever been
  • We have fantastic running ability across the board
  • Short distances 5, 10 and half marathon
  • Marathon and ultra race achievements
  • Individual and team results were in an attachment including Emily Seward’s Old Bird comment… Smiley winky Happy to publish if people would like to see this…. Just ask.

4. Is there any other information you wish to provide about your nominee that has not already been mentioned?

  • One of our founding members, Stuart Wild, was a member of the 100 marathon club until he tragically and very suddenly died in March 2013. We have an all inclusive fancy dress multi lap marathon every year in his honour with all proceeds going to our two nominated charities – Worcester Young Carers and Maggs Day Centre. Web page: https://bpj.org.uk/our-races/wild-race/ See news article: https://bpj.org.uk/2016/07/real-wild-miles/
  • This year one of our members suddenly died and in her honour we have a new 10km race with all donations to the charity of her choice. https://www.facebook.com/events/718759854928770/, https://bpj.org.uk/2016/08/a-wilkins-way-day/
  • We should NEVER forget that we have an incredible support entity who travel to races, cheer people on and give freely of their time to marshal at races. They are the unsung heroes and equally as important as the runners themselves. https://bpj.org.uk/2016/08/unsung-heroes/

Just in case you didn’t know: Paul also found the following in the world wide web archives. We seem to be good at this award winning lark: