‘Working as a team’ - Guidelines on how we work together as a club

Events run by the club, and other athletics events such as regional and state events, can create a lot of passion in the people involved in the club. But unfortunately, sometimes this passion can go a bit too far, and this can upset other people in the club or the sport. 

So it can be helpful to step back and think - how can we best avoid upsetting other people? How can we make this fun for everyone involved?

LAVic has prepared a code of conduct, found here, and this over-rides everything we do because they are our governing body. But what are some simple principles that we can apply every day?

There are a couple of key principles we like to talk about:

  •  'Family, fun and fitness'

  • 'We are not the Olympics'

OK, these are simple statements, but equally, these are useful statements to benchmark our behaviour. Both statements remind us that:

  • Athletes are not competing for Olympic medals. Instead, they are a bunch of children running around a track on a Saturday morning. Occasionally, one or two end up competing at an elite level - the rest are gaining valuable life lessons, which is why we all like to help out. 

  • Our officials are not Olympic-trained or resourced to the level of the Olympics. Occasionally, stuff goes wrong. This can be unfortunate, but in the long run, it does not matter that much - at all.

Having set some overriding principles, let’s think of some more specific guidelines:

  1. Please do not put pressure on any athlete, no matter how good or not-good they are. These athletes are just children at the end of the day. And this guideline applies more strongly to athletes who are not your children.....

  2. Please do not put pressure on any official - they are just trying to do their best. If you genuinely feel that an official is acting in an unfair manner, you are free to raise this with the President or other committee member - but not anyone else.

  3. Please obey the reasonable instructions of the officials - they are just trying to run an event. 

A special note on relays

We do notice, from time to time, that relays can inflame passions more than other events. So there are some additional guidelines for relays:

  • The coach is responsible for team selection. We expect that coaches will try to be as impartial as possible and choose athletes based on performance, attendance and teamwork, but ultimately it is up to them.  And as above, if you think that a coach is truly acting unfairly, you can raise this matter with the President or the committee.

  • Parents and athletes are expected to support the coach, turn up to training whenever possible, and compete in teams as determined by the coach.

  • Relay coaches are expected to be as inclusive and impartial as possible, communicate team selections as early as possible, and select athletes from designated age groups (unless it is clear that age groups need to be combined in order to select a sufficient number of athletes).