Thousands of little athletes across Australia have gone bananas for the inaugural Coles Little Athletics Community Round.
Little athletes go bananas for Coles Community Round
23 Mar 2021
Around 200 Little Athletics Centres from Collie River Valley in WA to Cassowary Coast in QLD got into the spirt of Coles Community Round by dressing up as bananas, eating bananas and running banana relays. Additionally, little athletes, parents and volunteers dressed themselves and their centres in Coles paraphernalia for the Round with Coles trucks, delivery vans, farmers, team members and Little Shop all popular themes to pay homage to Coles’ community partnership with Little Athletics.
Australian track and field stars including World Champion Dani Samuels and Commonwealth Games Gold Medallists Brandon Starc, Cameron Crombie and Kurtis Marschall made special appearances at selected Little Athletics Centres and events to inspire Australia’s little athletes.
Coles Store Team Members also supported their local centres by presenting awards, judging competitions, starting races, cooking BBQs, raking sand pits, handing out fruit and water and even racing against the kids!
Coles Corporate Affairs General Manager Sally Fielke said Coles was proud to partner with Little Athletics and Athletics Australia to help athletes live healthier, happier lives.
“Little athletics provides an important pathway for Aussie athletes and it’s also a place where kids develop healthy habits like being active and eating healthily,” she said.
“That’s why we’re incredibly proud to support Aussie athletes through banana donations and sports equipment grants from the Coles Little Athletics Community Fund.”
Coles Community Round is a celebration of the Coles’ partnership with Little Athletics Australia which commenced in 2017. Since then, Coles has donated over 3.5 million bananas and $1.6 million in sports equipment grants to more than 400 Little Athletics centres across Australia.
START: Fun, up beat music…lead in with the best photos and enough to create pace and excitement…
The first ever Coles Community Round has been held across the country and it went bananas.
To celebrate Coles partnership with Little Athletics around 40,000 kids, parents, guardians and volunteers from 200 centres across metropolitan, regional and remote Australia themed their weekly program with all things Coles…
They dressed as bananas, ate bananas, wrote with bananas…. and had banana relays…
[match with photos - best of each].
They made Coles trucks…dressed as delivery drivers…and even brought along the real thing [last image is of massive Coles truck in background].
A club canteen was turned into a Coles Little Shop…people turned themselves into little shops… some held Little Shop relays… [vision: of this …best at I think 1.08mins where race starts and capes fly by]
There were Coles Fashions of the Field competitions… colouring in and drawing competitions… and some clubs made videos.
UPSOT Come on little bananas it’s time to get to little athletics lets go…
26 of Australia’s high-performance athletes including able bodied and para athletes visited centres across the country inspiring the next generation…
…but it wasn’t just their autographs the kids were after…Coles Store Team Members became celebrities for the day presenting awards, …judging competitions, even taking part in races…
UPSOT… “GO”… play out whole video… (browns plains, store team running race FB video).
Team Members also helped out cooking BBQ’s, raking sand pits and handing out fruit and water.
Since the partnership began four years ago, Coles has donated around 3.5 million bananas and provided more than 1.6 million dollars’ worth of athletics equipment to grassroots programs…
Tonia Newman: 1.05… Sponsorship from major companies like Coles is extremely important for sporting organisations like little athletics… it helps the club with equipment it helps us showcase our talent …and we really appreciate that Coles has come out today to help support us.
Using the hashtag Coles Community Round… thousands of photos and videos from the event were splashed across social media.
Steve Solimon: This is definitely one of the most high energy environments I’ve ever been…it’s such a joy to watch the kids…I think just the energy of the Coles community round It’s an amazing partnership. Coles has been able to support little athletics and athletics is a foundation skill to any sport growing up and it’s great for Coles to be able to recognise that…and deliver support here at the community level…it’s a great partnership and one that I hope can continue for many years to come…
[Music rounds up … emotive.. some cute pics… slow mo].
