Ashgrove Rangers

Looking forward to attending the annual Western Bulldogs Athletic Performance Summit in Melbourne this Friday and Saturday at their home the Whitten Oval, affectionately known as the ‘kennel’.

This popped up conveniently the day before the National Cross Country at Ballarat last year and I decided to check it out. The decision to attend was coloured somewhat by being a lifelong Western Bulldogs supporter given my grandmother kicked footballs around with the boys in Footscray in the early 1900s.

It’s promoted as Australia’s leading development event for high performance and rehab professionals and covers a range of topics across many areas.

Last year was a sellout with 300 attendees from a wide variety of sports clubs at both professional and community levels.

Both last year and this year’s programmes included a large emphasis on both sprinting and distance running as well as many other sports science areas.

Even though we are a relatively small non-profit community club, trying our best to innovate at pace and learn from our successes and failures via regular testing in the competition arena has helped us move forward a lot over the past few years so it’s good to see an innovation item on the agenda for the Summit.

I’ll report back on anything that might pop up as potentially being of particular interest to our members moving forward in the next 12 months at our AGM on Saturday 12th September 4pm at the Everton Park Library which will be followed by the traditional dinner at 5.15pm at the Gaythorne RSL.

Some results that will be of interest out of the Sydney Marathon from an Ashgrove Rangers/Ernies viewpoint:

Andrew Bray 4:55.44
Gina de la Cruz 3:30.34
Katherine Jackman 4:21.57
John White 3:44.51

Well done folks would have been a big day.

Great running conditions although a bit chilly for spectators this morning at Des Connor parkrun.

Henry Dale was first over the line with a PB of 6:53.

A bumper field of 260 runners at Ashgrove parkrun this morning with nice conditions.

Henry Dale was 2nd overall in 18:48 and Daisy Carter 3rd Female in 21:19.

At Bunyaville Kristina Kersten was first Female over the line in 22:46.

News through that Anthony Wallace has finished in 7th place in the World Masters Athletics Championships 55 Plus 5k in Daegu, South Korea in 17:22.41.

After Bronze at Ballarat in the mud it’s been a big week for Anthony so suffice to say there won’t be a longer run at Bunyaville tomorrow morning however there will be a 3k ring road loop at 6am and another at 6.30am from the picnic grounds off Old Northern Rd.

Great work Anthony!

Folks,

Some handy results starting to filter through from Day One of Metropolitan East Regionals at QE2 yesterday.

Will post the full set for our athletes once final results are posted.

Boys

Jack Kingsnorth
8th U14 1500m 4:40.58
9th U14 1500m 63.95

Cam Cox
1st U18 1500m 4:06.51

Axle Pratten
2nd U18 1500m 4:18.06

Nick Kenos
4th U18 1500m 4:21.21

Ollie Van Camp
7th U15 Boys 400m 57.73
1st U15 Boys Discus 39.57

Folks,

Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday 12th September at 4pm.

The usual venue of Mitchelton Library is unavailable so the meeting will instead be held at Everton Park Library, 573 South Pine Rd, Everton Park.

However we will still stick with tradition having our post-meeting social dinner catchup at Gaythorne RSL on Samford Rd from 5.15pm.

This is your chance to hear what’s been happening during a very busy 12 months and have your say about how we move forward with the once in a lifetime opportunity of an Olympic Trials meet in 2032 likely to be 5k away from Ashgrove, and a modern lifestyle of local community connection through our sport.

Current committee consists of 7 members so we need a quorum of 15 club members on the day.

It’s been a whirlwind last week with the National Cross Country at Ballarat over the weekend, Met North Regionals at QE2 Tuesday/Wednesday and Met East Regionals starting today and concluding tomorrow at QE2.

Met West Regionals comes up next Tuesday/Wednesday at QE2 but thankfully we get a break from Qld Athletics events this weekend.

On Sunday though we have the Sydney Marathon which is the Australian Championship and now a World Major with 40,000 competitors including quite a few Ernies making the trip down.

You have to admire the Sydney folk for their perseverance as the idea of a major marathon showcase event in Sydney has been around since the days of the Wang Marathon which made its debut in 1983 but it was only last year that the current incarnation was finally granted Abbott World Major status.

Also this weekend we have the start of the Little Athletics season at both The Gap and Arana Centres.

Australia’s powerhouse efforts at the senior level of athletics these days has a lot to do with the early foundations built through running, jumping,throwing and socialising that Little Athletics provides as it helps bring local communities together.

Without local Little Athletics and school programmes as feeders, senior clubs like Ashgrove Rangers clearly couldn’t perform at the level they do.

Good luck to all athletes competing!

Full Results are now available from the Met North Regionals held over the past two days at QE2.

A big thanks to all of the athletes, parents, club and school coaches and officials who helped make it a rather extraordinary meet.

https://metnorthschoolsport.eq.edu.au/Documents/2026%20full%20results%20tfmm6results2col.pdf

Athletes in the school season will be heading not only to the QRSS Championships 13th to 19th October but also the Qld All Schools 1st to 4th October at QE2 and Australian All Schools in Perth 4th to 6th December.

Last year’s National All Schools Under 18 High Jump champion in Melbourne was Marist Ashgrove’s Lyndon Maynard who was back on the winner’s dais today in the 19 years event with a 1.91m clearance.

Looks like another epic school season coming up and for those who don’t qualify there are plenty more opportunities with the Qld Athletics Club Shield season kicking off on 31st October with State 5k and Relay Championships on 14th and 15th November.