New Year Junior Party 2015

The Late Late Christmas Party
Sunday 18th January 2015, The Toscano
by The Non Runner

IMG_3859I’m sure no-one noticed that we held our Christmas party in January, and if they did no one seemed to mind as our juniors, coaches and volunteers got into the party spirit at our annual social event.  Thankfully the juniors are better at attending events than their senior club counterparts, and we had 60 juniors with 15 coaches/volunteers all ready for party-time in The Toscano in Newcastle.

Behind the scenes myself and Pauline had taken on the organising of the party and we were very grateful for the quiz rounds submitted by the coaches and volunteers.  More on that later…. Also our parents had donated in their usual generous manner for the raffle.  This is the one chance that our junior athletes have to socialise and have fun together, in between attending races, and we know how much they enjoy their party.

IMG_3861PJ McCrickard seemed unusually surprised at being given the role of MC, but as I understood in NAC if you do something once then it’s taken for granted that you’ll just continue on? (Case in point-me, I offered to write one junior report, once.  Here I am several reports later, it’s a good job I enjoy doing it!)  We had our pizza party first and a huge thanks to Marco, Sheila, Lucia and Carlo and everyone at The Toscano for supplying our hungry mob (and thats just the coaches, who can eat a whole lot for a bunch of skinny people) with delicious pizza, chips, garlic bread and ice cream.  All freshly home made and delicious!  I felt sorry for the family who walked up from the street expecting a table for four, only to find we had taken over the place.

Next up was the now legendary quiz.  How tough would the questions be? Who would be the winning team?  Would the adults be any good in answering any of the questions?  Would the people who wrote a round of the quiz actually remember the answers? All of these questions and many more were answered as we proceeded with the quiz rounds.  Thanks to PJ, Gwenda, Joanna, Graham, Kerry, Nigel and Catherine for supplying the questions for our quiz.  Also thanks to Pauline for all her work behind the scenes getting the quiz rounds printed out.  We had a wonderful array of questions, I mean-who knows what height Brian Steele is?  As it turns out someone guessed only 1 cm out from the right answer.  Amazing.  Nigel’s nature round was an education and the sport round was far too easy PJ, as each team got 10 out of 10.  The picture round proved a great surprise when the photo of Bruno Mars as a child was mostly mistaken for Rihanna!  We weren’t without controversy of course, as there was a steward’s enquiry in our general knowledge round.  The answer regarding the longest river in the world was contested. Our answer was The Amazon, but it was suggested that the correct answer is in fact The Nile.  What else were we to do but despatch Brains McCrickard (Darragh) to Google to set the matter to rest.  It seems that even scientists aren’t sure (really?), so either answer was deemed as worthy of a point.  Of course the opportunity to use a really, really corny pun was not missed by coach David O’Flaherty.  My own round was the music round and after a shaky start trying to get the music to actually play, modern technology is great when it works, the intro to 10 songs were played.  I like to think I got a good balance with the songs, some recent and some a bit older to suit the coaches.  However the coach formally know as The Prophet suggested that he hadn’t much of an idea about any of the songs I had chosen.  It’s a good thing he wasn’t answering questions!  Reader, if you are of my vintage or younger, are you familiar with the Electric Light Orchestra?  Would you know that the abbreviation is E.L.O?  And that it isn’t a word that rhymes with yellow? Hmmmm, try telling that to PJ.  Our winning team, originally entitled “No Name”, were the victors and had their pick of vouchers as their prize.

Time was marching on and we proceeded with our raffle with some parents arriving on time, but having their patience tested by having to wait another half an hour until the festivities were over.  Ooops.  We had very generous donations from our parents and local businesses.  Mickey Hazard of Coco’s had donated free tickets, Michael Nugent of Sucos also donated vouchers.  Down Leisure Centre had provided vouchers for free swims, Urban Coffee in Castlewellan had donated vouchers for free hot chocolates and Mauds of Newcastle had donated a £10 voucher for one lucky winner.  Thank you to all of our sponsors, we really appreciate your kind donations.

We meet again on Sunday 25th January at Delamont Park at 1pm for the next race in our Junior XC series generously sponsored by McGrady Financial Services.  See you then!