Shettleston, EAC land Podium awards

Sunday 16th November 2014

There were proud athletes, coaches and officials at clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow recently, as Podium Accreditation certificates were handed out by scottishathletics.

Edinburgh AC and Shettleston Harriers were the recipients with their efforts in providing a safe and suitable environment for members formally acknowledged by the governing body.

scottishathletics operate a two-tiered system of club accreditation – the first being the Foundation Award and the second the Podium Award.

To achieve the awards, clubs must be able to demonstrate firstly they are organising and operating themselves in the proper manner.

Clubs must be accessible to all members of the community with athletes encouraged to stay with the club and train and compete at their chosen level. In addition, Podium Award recipients must demonstrate a formal link to local primary and secondary schools, providing pupils an opportunity to train or compete at an appropriate level.

Edinburgh and Shettleston are meeting these standards and Jamie McDonald, Regional Manager for the East of Scotland and Nigel Holl, chief executive, were on hand recently to make presentations to the clubs at Meadowbank and Reidvale Housing Association in Glasgow respectively.

Shettleston Harriers Podium award

‘These are the kind of nights we love to see and it makes a lot of hard work by the clubs very worthwhile,’ said Nigel, who attended the Annual Awards Night at Shettleston last Friday.

‘Huge credit to Shettleston and Edinburgh AC for both embracing theory and putting things into practice – with good practice in terms of their paperwork.

‘Now we want to help even more, through things like coach education, to keep clubs on an upward and onward journey. When clubs grow in size there’s a lot of hard work required behind the scenes to make sure the right kind of structures are in place.

‘I know both clubs, working with us via their scottishathletics regional managers, Jamie McDonald (Edinburgh AC) and Liz Francis (Shettleston Harriers), fully deserve these Podium Accreditation awards.’

Shettleston would like to thank Nigel, Councillor George Redmond, Brian Donaldson (Athletic Development Officer, Glasgow Sport) and Rohanne Irvine (Active East) who came along to help celebrate the award and the club’s 2014 Track and Field Season.

Edinburgh were delighted to receive their award from Jamie with special thanks to Pat Sinclair and Moira Maguire for their hard work for EAC in order to meet the required standards.

Good to see EAC receiving some positive publicity via Sandy Sutherland’s article in the Edinburgh Evening News with the club appealing for sponsorship to help with another entry into the European Clubs Track and Field champs in 2015.