Great to see athletes, officials and supporters from all generations of the club out in force at today’s Honeyeater Street Park Round of the Brisbane Cross Country Series at Upper Kedron including Official Don Stapleton who was a fourteen year old when the club started in 1962.

It was a very enjoyable day for us hosting our fellow clubs with assistance with the Honey Prizes from Teralba Park Honey so a big shout out to them.

We had to cancel the pretty Ross Road Park Trail loop due to the slippery conditions but the Honeyeater loop provided enough of a challenge anyway in the conditions.

Everything we have touched in Track and Field the last ten years seems to have worked out impossibly well but as a club we have such a proud long history in distance running and Cross Country it has taken us a long time and a lot of work over the past few years to re-build back up to where we are now.

But today I thought we had all the ticks we need for success going forward with an incredible response from helpers, great effort and application from our entry list of 30 athletes and most importantly the necessary spirit, aided by the ambiance that was created at this meet by the new Roy and HG commentary team on the microphone Aidan Hobbs and Daniel Casey.

You get out of sport what you put in and how much you contribute to other people – let’s hope a few of our youngsters who enjoyed contributing at today’s event like Don are still going strong with their involvement in some sort of sport in 62 years time as athletes for life.

Dave Brown from Queensland Athletics ensured that despite some of the fun we had today at Honeyeater the meet was still above board ensuring that our Strawberry Creamed Honey Prizes from Teralba Park Honey met the World Athletics standards befitting the outright Male and Female winners of our races today.

The Honeyeater Cross Country was the closest in Brisbane Cross Country Series history with Toowong winning the meet by only two points from Thompson Estate 588 to 586 and Ashgrove just a further six points behind on 580.
Redlands tipping out Athletics North by one point for fourth 282 to 281.

That gives us a little more buffer in third overall but we will still need to get quite a few along to Toowoomba Showgrounds this Saturday to hold off the challengers.

In the individual Series we are still doing brilliantly in the Female point scores leading four of the age groups through Kitty Stannard (Under 8s), Lara Wannenburgh (Under 18s), Theres Schulze (Open 6k) and Lynda Bateson (Masters).
Daisy Carter (Under 20s) and Andrew Carkeet (Open 6k) are still in second with Kristina Kersten third in Under 18s.