The history of Arena 80 Athletics Club
In honour of the new cross country season starting this weekend (Saturday 30th) we’ve managed to find these photo’s from the archives of how it was back in the 80’s. The athletes would get changed in cattle sheds (so glamourous) as shown in the photo with an ex member Peter Fair. Above all this was…
Found in the archives are these results from what was the Arena club championships that Arena used to hold. These are from 1998 and 2001 and show that the athletes back then had to do a mixture of different races and depending on their times and places they then scored points to eventually have an…
Here is a newspaper article from around 1985 showing how Ron Grover not only wanted the team to be the best but also look the best. It’s all about the fashion darlings and check out how much kitting yourself would have cost you back then.
Here is a fascinating newspaper article from around 2000 we think. It gives a great overview of Ron Grover and why he started the club. It has a piece on Lynn Williams & Caroline Herbert (Hoyte) and their athletic achievements.
Arena Club History Part 5 And so 36 years on, here we are.… In October 1999 Bill retired from running and his coaching (and secretarial) duties due to injury and so again Arena was looking for a new coach/chairman. As it happened there was a new kid on the block who had been with Arena…
Arena Club History Part 4 It’s ladies day As the club grew it soon became apparent that Arena 80 had an extremely strong ladies team which is something that seems to have stuck with Arena for some 36 years. Back in the day very few clubs had a ladies team, although there was some very…
Arena Club History Part 3 From a past members point of view Here is a letter and some photos received very recently from a founder member of A80 which gives a very interesting insight into the clubs history in the early years. Arena 80 started training on Mondays at Withdean in 1981 and my sister…
Arena Club History – Part 2 The golden years and changes During the mid-80’s Arena had an incredible spell as a running club. For a couple of years Arena was invincible. During those two years Arena won virtually every trophy there was going including the Sussex Grand Prix for two years in a row. Trophies…
So here it is! After much research and talking to past club members, we have put together the history of the club. There are 5 parts to this so we will put one part up each day for the next 5 days. I hope it gives you a sense of pride in the club, from…