Mud, Motors and a Midweek Miracle: The Athleticos Grassroots Awards 2026
There is no red carpet at grassroots athletics. There is a tarmac path, a gazebo with one leg cable-tied to a fence, and a tea urn that has attended more fixtures than most of us. But awards season is awards season, so pull up a plastic chair and settle in.
Welcome to the Athleticos Grassroots Awards 2026 — our annual, entirely unofficial, faintly chaotic roll-call of the people and performances that made the club scene worth the journey this year. No elite podiums. No Diamond League. Just Tuesday nights, league fixtures, and the sort of stories that never make the results page.
The 300-Mile Relay Leg Award
This one goes to a club volunteer — let's call her Cath, because that is her name and she deserves it — who answered a message at 9pm on a Friday asking whether anyone could possibly make up a women's 4x400m quartet the following afternoon.
Cath lives in the south-west. The fixture was in the north-west. She drove up on the morning of the match, ran a leg she described afterwards as "not my best, honestly, I was third", ate a slice of somebody's birthday cake, and drove home again. Round trip: a shade over 300 miles.
Why? Because a quartet of teenagers had trained all season for that race, and a no-show would have meant no relay, no points, and a very quiet coach journey home. Cath got a thank-you card and now, additionally, a fictional award from a website. She seemed genuinely delighted about the card.
The Midweek Miracle Award
Breakthrough performance of the year, and roughly eleven people saw it.
A second-year under-17 hammer thrower — we'll spare her blushes — turned up to a midweek league meeting in July having thrown 38 metres all season. Third round, she finally put one together. The ball landed, the measurers had a small conference, and the number that came back was 44.61.
Cue mild pandemonium among the throwing group, a coach doing a small dance beside the cage, and a marshal asking, perfectly reasonably, whether the tape measure was broken. It was not. She spent the rest of the evening ringing her grandparents.
The best bit? It was a Tuesday. No cameras, no livestream, no highlights package. Just a circle, a cage, and an athlete who found one.
The Best-Dressed Facilities Award
A special commendation to the club whose changing arrangements this season consisted of a shipping container, a camping table and a laminated sign reading "TOILETS — ASK AT THE HUT".
You know who you are. We salute you. Every club in the country has a hut, a container or a portacabin held together by goodwill and a rota, and somehow they all smell faintly of Deep Heat. It is part of the sport, and long may it remain so.
The Loudest Encouragement Award
This is not a criticism. Well. It is a bit of a criticism.
Every club has one: the parent audible from the far side of the 400m, who treats an under-13 800m as though it is the final of a major championships, and whose bellows of "COME ON, DIG IN" have been known to carry across three adjacent football pitches.
This year's winner shouted with such enthusiasm during a long jump run-up that the athlete stopped halfway down the runway to see what was going on. Said athlete then jumped a personal best. The parent claims full credit. We have gently suggested that volume is not the same as coaching, and also that we would quite like them on our side at the next fixture.
The "Can We Just Check That" Award
For services to confusion, we present this to a hand-timed 100m in May, where three timekeepers clicked three different watches and produced three different times — all within 0.14 of one another, none of them agreed upon.
The race was re-run. The re-run was slower. Everyone went home slightly annoyed and slightly amused in equal measure. Hand timing remains the great unsung comedy of our sport, and we will not hear a word against it.
The Club Hero: Over To You
Here is the thing about the grassroots scene. For every story that gets told, there are a hundred that don't. The person who does the entries on a Sunday night. The one who washes the bibs. The coach who drives four teenagers to a fixture because their parents are working. The one who notices the athlete who has gone quiet.
So we're opening the floor. Between now and the end of the year, tell us about your club hero — the marshal, the coach, the parent, or the athlete who finished last and turned up again the following week. Drop us an email or find us on social media, and we'll round up the best of them in a follow-up piece.
No prize. Just a mention on a website read by people who will absolutely understand why it matters. Which, honestly, is the whole point.
One More Thing
A quick word of thanks, too, to the officials. Not a joke entry, this one. Without the starters, the timekeepers, the field judges and the people who reassemble the cage in the rain, none of the above happens at all. If you have ever idly considered volunteering, your club's officials would bite your hand off.
See you on a cold touchline in 2027.
