News

Heartland Racewalkers celebrated their 27th year on Dec. 19, 2015 at the home of BJ Thornburg. 24 members and guests attended this event. After a delicious brunch, it was time for announcements, awards and elections. Alan distributed the year-end summary of events and gave his report of another successful year. Awards (special plaques) were presented to BJ as the “Come-Back Kid” of the Year (because of her courageous recovery from her bone fractures that she suffered at the Missouri Senior Games in June and to Jean Brunnenkant who has continued to make racewalking history with our club up to her 99th birthday party. We are looking forward to her 100th in August. John Anderson took honors for accumulating the most participation points during the year (gift to received later since he was out of town). .
Door prizes were selected with the help again of Sharon Poisner and BJ. Alan thanked the officers and board for the work that they had done to support the club during the past year. Alan then presented a review of the 20 years of his Presidency (a type of Farewell Address). This is the first significant change in leadership since 1995 and represents 20 of the 26 years of Heartland Racewalkers. This review is shown elsewhere in the News.

Handouts were passed around, including a history of the Brew to Brew races that our club has entered.
Elections for the 2016 year were held with the first significant change after 20 years, since Alan has decided to move on to Past President and our current Vice-President, BJ Thornburg, was elected as the incoming President. Pat Durkin was elected Vice President. The Secretary (Carol Smith) and Treasurer (Tom Oakes) were reelected. Another retirement was that of Fred Adams who has served for many years as Clinic Director and his replacement is Sunday Cavallaro.

This was another banner year for HRW. We had a number of outreach events in the community with the help of BJ Thornburg, John Anderson and Alan. We continued our good relations with the Kansas City Track Club by hosting a Wednesday Night Run and participating in relays and road races. We won lots of medals at state and national events and the Prez set some national records and received the National Racewalker of the Year Award from the USATF Masters Racewalking Committee. News, results and pictures of the past year can be found at the respective links on our website. We expect HRW will continue the tradition of racewalking excellence and camaraderie in 2016.