Meet the President (2022-23)

Our President for the past year has been Vince Carroll.  Vince provided us with an insight into his athletic history.

As a boy I enjoyed running ,football and all sport, I enjoyed the competition against others. Unfortunately my school never really supported cross country so I only ran once in a county schools event when I just entered and turned up myself. When I was 21 I entered the London Marathon to run for charity and from my own devised training plan finished in 3 hours 17 minutes.  People noticed this and encouraged me to join the local running club Northampton Phoenix. I ran my first Birmingham League Division 2 race at Burbage common in November 1991 and ran my 100^th race at Abington Park Northampton in January 2019, I have currently run 109 races, my highest position 69^th in Division 1 and 31st in Division 2.

I have started in the men’s cross country team manager role in 2000 as Phoenix and continued the role in 2002 after the  merger with Rugby until present .I also managed the track team as Phoenix and the first few years of Rugby & Northampton. In that time I have also qualified as a track and field judge also. Over past few years I have spent more time coaching some of the clubs seniors and vets and I have a group of boys and girls who are doing well in the West Midlands Young Athletes League which is the breeding ground to the Birmingham League. This season it was 15^th time Rugby and Northampton have hosted the league and myself and the late John Love who was my mentor and stalwart of the league have contributed as the lead planners.

This year it was my honour to be President of league.  At the first fixture at Stoke I  spoke a few words before the race  and ran the race.  Due to a shortage of our club runners ,I scored in the clubs A team on the day. At the final race at Northampton I had the honour to organise the race and say a few words, but declined starting it as my first love is running in the league.  My race that day was cut short due to a calf injury, but in contrast to the first race the team historically won the event on the day for the first time ever in Division 1.