Ashhurst Athletic and Harrier Club

About

A Club which caters for children from 3-14 years. We offer sprints, middle distance running, long jump, high jump, discus and shot put. Tuesdays 5.30.

Story

The Club was founded in 1971 and a track marked out at the Ashhurst Race course, now the Domain where meetings were held on Saturday mornings. In 1973 the meetings shifted to the school grounds where a 300m track was marked out, an athletics shed built and meetings held on Tuesday evenings. In 1975 the meetings were switched to Lincoln Park (Lincoln Street Reserve) where there was just room for a 400m track to be marked out; the long jump pit was constructed (sand trucked from Ohakea) and the throwing circles built. Getting the Club going involved a lot of fundraising (raffles and auctions) and voluntary labour. The committee even had several years when they had to mow the grass at Lincoln Park before the Council took over the mowing!

In the 70's and 80's the Club had some senior members who, apart from summer athletics, did harrier running in the winter for a few years and organised an Ashhurst Road race. It also punched above its weight - Ashhurst had 7 or 8 runners in the Rotorua Marathon in 1982, which had 3500 runners, and our Club managed to come third in the teams event, beating many large clubs from all major cities in New Zealand. At the prizegiving afterwards everyone was saying 'where is Ashhurst?' - they had never heard of it. A similar thing happened at the Children's Colgate Games at Inglewood (2013) where we also did very well.

But all of these achievements are overshadowed by the effort of one of our former members, Thelma Pitt-Turner, who in 1985 ran the Hastings marathon in 7hrs 58mins. Now you may think that's not very good but Thelma was 82 years old and had her picture, wearing the Ashhurst Club singlet, in the Guinness Book of Records.

We have a proud athletic history for a very small town. We pride ourselves on developing skills in athletes aged 3-12.