Parent Helper Roles
Supervising a Little Athletics meet requires a great deal of adult participation. Our Friday evening ‘meets’ at St George might typically involve anywhere up to 350 young athletes across 18 or so Age/Gender groupings performing from 4 to 6 events each in the evening. It is quite impossible for the Committee (all volunteers) to fulfil the large number of roles involved, and so most of the tasks involved in supervising athletics competitions fall to parents.
For this reason, registering children in the sport comes with an obligation to participate in the delivery of the program.
On average, each family should expect to “put their hand up” to fill one of these roles about every 2nd meet we hold. Some parents generously participate much more often than that, for which we are very grateful.
Types of Roles
Setup Roles
These roles commence an hour or two prior to the meet and will suit parents who can arrive early and especially those whose children are young and will finish their events early. They include tasks such as: spreading/raking/preparing the sand in the Long Jump pits, setting up High Jump mats, distributing the throwing implements to the appropriate location, deploying signage, setting up track facilities including Tents, tables, finish line timing equipment, start line flags & so on.
Canteen / BBQ
These roles include Canteen servers & BBQ cooks who’ll assist our (volunteer) Canteen Manager. We’ve structured the various shifts to match the typical ‘demand’ profile of hungry athletes and parents! [We accept both cash and debit/credit card payments & we use the ‘Square’ system to accept payments.]
Supervising Track Events
These roles include Marshals who organise athletes onto & off the track, and Starters / Recorders who use electronic equipment to start races, capture athlete identity and to capture race results in the race computers. For more detail, see: Parent Helper Resources
Supervising Field Events
Each field Event (eg. Shot Put) utilises 2 or 3 ‘helpers’ to perform tasks such as retrieving the throwing implement, marking its landing position and measuring throws and jumps. For more detail, see: Parent Helper Resources
Age Managers & Helpers
Each Age Group is led from event to event by an Age Group Manager & Deputy Manager, and if needed, a small number of parent helpers (the number depending on the age of the athletes and the size of the group). For each Age Group, at the start of the season, we appoint an Age Manager / Deputy for the season (through an application process). Their role is more fully described here: Age Manager Role (where you’ll find the application form). If needed, additional helpers per Age Group will be recruited each week via Sign-Up. (These roles will be popular – please don’t monopolise them!)
How to “SignUp” to fill a Role
We use the “Sign-Up” system to enable parents to choose the role (‘duty’) they’ll fulfil for a given Friday evening competition, and to register that choice well before coming to the ground. The Sign-Up duty list is usually published early in the week. [Note: Age Managers/Deputies don’t use SignUp for their roles.]
There are 2 ways to access the SignUp and choose a role:
- Click the large “SignUp” logo you’ll find on every page or this website; OR
- Tap the “SignUp” button on the front screen of Team App. [To install Team App, see Team App Brochure ]
Some parents like to specialise around a particular duty area (which we encourage), while others prefer to vary their duties from one Friday evening to another.
If you’ve Signed-Up but then discover you can’t attend that Friday – please remove yourself from the SignUp so someone else can choose that role.
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It’s important that you use Sign-Up to record your duty selection (and are present for the full duration of that duty) rather than just turning up at the ground with a plan to help. We do confirm in person that Signed up parents are in attendance at their Duty; however, we cannot guarantee to count your contribution if you’ve undertaken a duty but didn’t SignUp before coming to the ground.
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Summary & More Information
We need families to fill a Parent Helper role on a regular basis throughout the season & we will nominate early in the season the minimum number of times you’ll need to undertake a duty to fulfill your parent helping obligations. That number depends on the number of families available vs the number of duties required across the season, but it should usually not exceed half the number of meets we have scheduled for the season.
If at any stage you are unsure how to go about fulfilling this requirement, please contact our Officer for Officials and we’ll assist you.
At all times, ensure you support and abide by these Behavioural Guidelines and Codes of Conduct.
Here is some general advice from LANSW about parents’ role at Little Athletics.
There’s much more helpful information for parent helpers on the Parent Helper Resources page.
Use this button to Sign-up to a parent duty at our next Friday Night Competition.
[duty list will be available ~4-5 days prior to a Meet]
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