The Valley Striders AGM 2023 was postponed from the usual November date and took place on 16th January 2024. The evening started with the Chairperson’s statement, where our chair, Steph Gledhill, spoke about the importance and value of volunteers within our club.
Chairperson’s Statement
“I’m concentrating my statement on our club volunteers this year.
I’d like to start by giving my thanks to the volunteers in the club who help out in various roles in our handicap races, parkrun takeover and the Meanwood Valley Trail race. It’s a challenge each year to get enough people to make it a successful and safe race and without you we wouldn’t be able to host it.
Moving onto the people who get more involved, from organising social events, being on the MVT committee to ensure the race does go ahead, Sue who organises the handicap races every 3 months, our club captains organising teams for races, our regular run leaders across all sessions including parents who help out with the junior sessions, the amazing work Bob does each week organising the juniors and our membership. Valley Striders wouldn’t be the club it is without you.
And finally to the committee, I really do appreciate all the help and dedication you give year in year out. Sam has done an amazing job organising and updating our polices, meetings, training schedules and social gatherings, Mick does brilliantly ensuring our accounts and payments are managed well.
I’d like to thank our committee members, captains and volunteers who are stepping down this year:
John Shanks: Men’s captain
David Middlemass: Fell captain
Steve Webb: Fell Grand Prix
Jade Beale: socials, organising improver training on Spond and the MVT committee.
A big thank you to John Hussey who has been on the committee alongside me since 2016 (and possibly beforehand), John has taken on the role as Welfare Officer, Deputy Chair, MVT committee member, membership support, being the main contact for improvers, and organising training & ultra running sessions. You’ve been a great person to work with over the years and myself and the committee will miss your input.
I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone out, there are so many roles which need undertaking to have a successful club. I’m looking forward to working with our new volunteers and I’d like to ask people to consider volunteering for our vacant roles, hopefully you can see what a great help you would be to keep the club stay great.
Life Membership- Paul Furness
We have discussed life membership and decided to award this to Paul Furness for the junior volunteering and race volunteering he provides. Life membership is for club members for over 25 years.”
To see the agenda for the AGM and a table showing the organisational structure of Valley Striders with details of the many, many volunteers that play a part in keeping the club going, click here.
Steph’s opening statement was followed by reports from our membership secretary, Bob Jackson, and our treasurer, Mick Tinker.
Bob also presented a comprehensive report on the junior section of the club, with Richard Irvine providing an update on the competitive year 7-11 training group.
Mick also presented an update on this year’s Meanwood Valley Trail Race.
This was followed by a presentation from the men’s captain, John Shanks, and the ladies’ captains, Rachel Davidson and Sam Harris.
With several long standing members stepping down from roles this year, requests were made for volunteers to fill the vacancies. The following will be taking up new roles this year:
Welfare Officers: James Slater (committee member) and Becca Whalley
Men’s Captain: Andy Parkinson
MVT Committee Member: Matt Dix
Fell Captain: Keith Brewster
Thank you to those that stepped forwarded.