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COVID 19 Updates

Updated Attendance Policy

 

We have updated our COVID-19 Attendance Policy. Click here to view this document. 

Club Statement on Returning To Training -  4th April 2021

Message to all club members, parents and guardians of club members

 

We're pleased to announce that our phased return to training starts next Thursday, 8th April. 

 

It's not 'business as usual', however. Initially, we are limiting this session to those athletes who were eligible to attend last September & October (in effect, those who were attending indoor Session 3 back in March 2020).  We will also run a session for the same group on 15th April.  We are aiming to gradually scale up operations as we gain more experience of training under 'COVID-secure' circumstances.

 

Please read the document entitled 'April 2021 training' to understand what we're asking of parents and athletes to ensure that sessions are COVID-secure. 

 

Currently, we don't have the option to train indoors, so, if bad conditions are forecast, we will need to cancel training and we will alert you by email.

 

If your athlete is eligible to attend, but did not come last autumn, we will contact you separately with some paperwork that we'll need from you before the session.

 

If the health situation for your athlete has changed since last October, please contact us for a new form and if you have any other concerns or questions, please feel free to email us at this address.

 

Finally, there's one more thing you can do to help us: as we're needing to do more meticulous planning than pre-COVID, it would be really helpful if you could let us know in advance if your athlete will not be able to attend that week's session.

 

We're looking forward to seeing lots of athletes on Thursday at 7pm!

Older Statements

28th March 2021

We've recently had some encouraging news - Wilmslow High School will soon reopen for community bookings of outdoor facilities. This means we can now work with some confidence towards restarting training.  This will need to be a phased return and we're hoping that the first groups will resume in April.  We're now sorting out lots of detail and hope to be able to tell you more in a week or two.

 

Unfortunately, we also have some not-so-good news: the vacancy for club membership secretary has not yet been filled. Therefore, we are once again appealing for a volunteer or volunteers to take on this role, which is essential to the smooth running of the club. The main responsibilities are:

  • to manage the membership renewals process and new membership applications

  • to produce athlete registers for training sessions

  • to manage the membership waiting list

  • to report to the committee - currently 5 or 6 meetings a year

This job requires absolutely no athletics knowledge and there is no expectation for the membership secretary to be involved in training sessions or competition attendance.

 

We believe the role could be successfully job-shared by two people. We would also welcome offers from the wider family of club members e.g. grandparents.

If you'd like a no-obligation chat about what's involved, please email me at this address or give me a ring on 07784 282991.

 

Please do consider whether you, or another member of your wider family could help the club by taking on this essential job.

27th February 2021

At last, things are looking better for a return to club athletics!

 

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement about the roadmap for releasing lockdown, we have started planning for a restart. England Athletics have issued initial guidance (see link below) and we expect a detailed update in due course.

 

Our interim plan is to resume training outdoors in April, subject to restrictions being eased on the hoped-for dates. To keep everyone safe, we will need to plan in meticulous detail and to introduce some new processes. We will probably implement a phased return to help us learn how to operate in a COVID-secure manner.

 

As soon as we have definite plans, we will be in touch with the club community via email.  Meanwhile, we strongly encourage all our athletes to take advantage of the increased daylight and, we hope, warmer weather to get into training at home with other family members. 

There are lots of ideas on the England Athletics website:

  • For under-11s, try the Funetics YouTube channel here

  • For 11+, the Athletics @home challenges  here 

  • Links to current England Athletics guidance issued on the 24th February can be found here 

15th November 2020

During September and October our group of oldest athletes resumed training. To be COVID-secure, we needed to make wholesale changes to our routines but the sessions were very successful and enjoyable. However, Lockdown 2 has put paid to any indoor training in groups for the rest of this year and it now seems very unlikely that we will be able to meet outdoors before 2021. At the time of writing, it's too early to put any dates on when we will restart but we will be in touch when the situation becomes clearer.

 

Meanwhile, we strongly encourage all our athletes to stay active. Most of you will be aware that England Athletics has online resources to support training at home - please see the links below. Also, to add a bit of variety, we are working on some specific HWAAC challenges. We hope to be able to announce the details very soon!

 

Finally, we have one date for your diaries. Please keep the evening of Thursday 3rd December free for a pre-Christmas HWAAC online get-together. This will be instead of the awards evening that we would normally hold at this time of year. We are planning some fun activities for athletes and parents alike. There will also be some AGM business, but if you've been with us a while, you will know that we are good at getting through all of that quickly! We'll send out joining details nearer the date.

England Athletics links:

For under-11s, try the Funetics YouTube channel here

For 11+, the Athletics @home challenges  here 

Links to current England Athletics guidance issued on the 4th November can be found here 

4th October 2020

We have begun a phased resumption of training, starting with our senior group of athletes. In September this group trained at the Carrs, with a focus on building fitness. This month we have returned to Wilmslow High School, making use of the school gymnasium and outside area for fitness, skills and endurance activities. 

It has taken a lot of planning and preparation to get to this point. We have been guided by a suite of documents issued by England Athletics (see links below) and worked closely with High School staff to ensure adherence to their additional requirements.  As you know, on a pre-COVID training night there would be lots of people in the gym, with groups of athletes working on different activities using a range of equipment. Obviously, we cannot currently work this way so the coaching team has devised new routines which are compatible with social distancing, having smaller numbers indoors and reduced usage of equipment to minimise the cleaning requirements. We are using the month of October to pilot some of these new ways of working with our senior group of athletes.

 

We know that many younger athletes will be disappointed that we are not yet able to offer them training. Our hope is that, as we gain experience of operating our new routines and keeping the training environment ‘COVID-secure’, we will eventually be able to invite back more of our membership. Unfortunately, we’re not able to give any firm dates on this just yet.

We encourage those athletes who are not yet back with us to build fitness and consolidate skills using England Athletics’ online resources for home-based training:

For under-11s, try the Funetics YouTube channel here

For 11+, the @home challenges with Jenny Meadows here 

Links to current England Athletics guidance can be found here 

1st September 2020

We are delighted to announce that we will soon begin a phased return to training for some of our athletes.

Initially we will be offering the return to our oldest group of athletes only - in effect, those who were attending Session 3 in the winter. 

 

The first few sessions will be outdoors, fitness-based and shorter than our normal sessions - roughly 35 minutes. They will take place at the Carrs in Wilmslow, starting on 10th September. There are more details in the attached document called September 2020 Training.

 

In accordance with guidance from England Athletics, we have risk-assessed these sessions and put in place a number of measures to ensure that we maintain a 'COVID-secure' environment. Apologies, but as part of this we need some paperwork from parents/carers. In advance of the first session, we need parents/carers to:

  • Complete a Health Questionnaire for their athlete and also sign the declaration that they have read and understood the club's COVID-19 attendance policy (which is part of the same document).

  • Send scans/photos of the competed forms to us at hwaac@hotmail.co.uk 

  • Read the document called September 2020 Training.

If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to email us at hwaac@hotmail.co.uk

 

In case you're wondering, from October we are working towards offering training which includes indoor activity. We have a lot of detailed planning to get through, but hope we can finalise our ideas later this month.

 

Looking forward to seeing lots of our athletes on the 10th.

31st July 2020

Message to all club members, parents and guardians of club members

Since the COVID-19 restrictions were announced, all formal club training activities have been suspended in line with the guidance issued by England Athletics (EA). Our regular training venue, Wilmslow High School, has also been closed throughout this period.

The club committee met earlier this month to discuss options for the resumption of training. We were guided by a suite of documents issued by EA (recently revised) which set out in detail the measures to be considered. The club committee’s conclusion was that we should proceed on a cautious basis. We are now working through a long list of issues with a view to a first phase of a return to training in September.

Our current thinking is that this would be for older athletes only, would be outdoors and be based around fitness training to minimise the need for equipment. We will meet again in August to firm up our plans before communicating them with club members. Obviously, our plans are subject to change as guidance from Government and EA continues to evolve.

Links to current guidance (at 17th July) can be found at: England Athletics Guidance for COVID-19  

Regarding indoor training for the autumn, we are not yet in a position to make any detailed decisions, but we anticipate that we will need to substantially change the arrangements from those in place pre-COVID-19.

 

The club committee is disappointed that we are not able to offer more at this stage. However, we encourage our athletes to build their fitness and consolidate their skills while we are not able to train together. We encourage our athletes to use England Athletics’ online resources designed for home-based training:

For Under-11s :  the Funetics YouTube Channel

For 11+ @home challenges with Jenny Meadows

For our oldest athletes plus parents, the Weekly30 

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