VETERANS TRACK AND FIELD

For athletes aged 35 and over, we compete in the Midland Veterans Track and Field League.

This league is fun friendly and competitive, with the opportunity to compete in all track and field disciplines in your age group, letting you compete in your favourite events and also try an event for the first time  You’re never too old to sprint, jump, throw, race-walk, or run up to 3,000m, plus a different relay every fixture.  The league runs over the summer on a Wednesday or Thursday evening.

For those not familiar with the Track and Field Vets League, it is a league based competition held over four meetings during the summer and is open to all athletes over 35. Most meetings have a full range of track and field events but only a selected number of events are open to each of the veteran age group, (otherwise the meets would go on all night). Eight teams were in our league.

The 2025 season saw Roger and Alex take over the management of the team from Jo and Alan Smallwood. They passed on their wisdom and experience on how to manage the team and get the most from the pool of veteran athletes at the club.

Roger and Alex as well as the Club thank them for their years of service to cajole and coerce athletic veterans to compete with the best in the West Midlands.

As we are fully aware the weather over the summer has been predominantly dry and warm. This makes for good athletics. Both competing and watching. We had a really fun time. This year’s meeting were held at Worcester, Stratford and twice at Redditch.

The ethos behind the team selection this year was for everyone to try hard and have fun. With this comes success. Just look at what the senior team has achieved.

The team had it’s fair share of injuries through the season, but it was pleasing to see that by the end of the summer we could find more than sufficient numbers to fill nearly every event at Redditch. It was great to see quite a number of first timers to the league, including Judy Foster, Karen and Simon Thompson, Adrian Dale, Andy Yapp and Steve Horton.

Both the ladies and men’s teams were consistent through the whole season, finishing pretty much in fourth place at every event and therefore fourth over all. There were some extremely noteworthy performances with the highlight for the men in the last event at Redditch where there was a clean sweep of wins in the 800m (M60, M40 and M35) by Simon Thompson, Marc Turner and Paul Bradley. In the ladies they gave both Worcester and Stratford something to think about in the first meeting when they came a close third.

So this season has closed, but both Roger and Alex are already planning for the next few years, they have their eyes on those approaching the vets age and those newcomers to the club. There seems to be a lot more interest in competing and joining in the fun the Vets League offers. If any of you fancy a go then get in contact. Stage one will be to get yourself on the Vets WhatsApp group, then stay fit over the winter ready for an assault on the higher places in the league from May next year.

For further information:

vets.manager@halesowen-athleticclub.co.uk