What is the Star Awards System?
The Star Awards System provides athletes in age groups 6-12s with goals to aim for during the season, rewarding skill development, improvement and achievement. An athlete can earn each star by achieving the qualifying standard in the prescribed number of events for their age group – the mixture of track and field events is designed to encourage athletes to develop skills generally.
An athlete can be awarded up to 5 stars - Yellow, Green, Red, Blue and Gold - and is encouraged to affix these to their uniform or t-shirt as earned.
***Note there have been changes to star awards for the 2026/27 season so please read all information, even if you have participated in prior seasons.
How Do I Claim a Star Award?
Claiming a Star Award is simple! There are three key steps to follow:
Step #1:Print the Star Award performance sheet for the athlete's relevant age group
Step #2:Populate with the athlete's achievements each week. Results can be accessed via ResultsHQ.
We encourage parents to reguarly review results with their children. This helps to encourage the athletes during the season and increases the sense of achievement they will feel as they work towards their goals.
When completing the Star Award performance sheet, results must be entered for each event against the star colour categories in order, starting with Yellow. The number of events required to achieve each star depends on an athlete’s age group as follows:
| Yellow, Green, Red and Blue Stars |
- 6’s & 7’s – See below for more details on the 6’s & 7’s Star Award requirements
- 8’s – 1 x track + 2 x field, or 1 x field + 2 x track
- 9’s to 10’s – 2 x track + 2 x field
- 11’s to 12’s – 3 x track + 2 x field, or 3 x field + 2 x track
|
| ^Gold Stars |
- 6’s to 12’s – Any 2 events, track or field
|
A few examples that help explain this:
- Say an athlete achieves a Gold standard performance for 100m in Week 1, that result must be entered against Yellow. If in Week 2 the same athlete then achieves another Gold standard performance for 100m, the result must be entered against Green, and so on.
- Say an athlete completes their Yellow star in Week 5 and then achieves the 100m Yellow performance for the first time in Week 6. That performance must be entered against the Yellow star, not Green (even if they have achieved a higher level of performance).
Note: The qualifying standards are based on the LANSW multi-event and non-multi-event points tables. However, because it is significantly harder for smaller athletes to perform well in the “strength” events – Shot Put, Discus and Javelin – the qualifying standards for those events have been reduced.
Extra Information for 6’s & 7’s Star Awards
Star awards for the under 6s and 7s are focussed on helping the youngest athletes to develop a good technique outside of the pressures of achieving specific performance targets. Instead of having performance based targets for their yellow, green and red stars, under 6 & 7 athletes will be taught a series of basic skills for their track and field events and awarded stars once they demonstrate the following number of skills for each level:
- Yellow – demonstrate all 3 x track and 3 x field skills
- Green – demonstrate 2 x track + 2 x field skills
- Red – demonstrate 2 x track + 1 x field skills, or 1 x track and 2 x field skills
- Blue – 1 x track + 2 x field, or 1 x field + 2 x track performances
- Gold – Any 2 event performances, track or field
The target skills for each level are shown in this U6 & U7 Star Award Reference sheet. Skills will be taught each week by the club coaches and age managers and will be assessed on a regular basis. Achievement of each skill will be recorded by the age managers on a star chart and once the awards officer has been notified, stars will be awarded the following week.
Once an athlete has achieved their red star, they will be eligible to also achieve their blue and gold stars, which are based on performance targets similar to other age groups. Qualifying standards for blue and gold are provided in the Star Award Performance sheets below.
Extra Information for 11’s Star Awards
Star awards for under 11s will continue to operate as per other age groups, with the exception of the new events under 11s learn – triple jump, high jump and javelin. To help the athletes master these new events outside of the pressures of performance, yellow, green and red targets for these events will be skills based rather than performance based. The target skills for each level are shown in this 11’s Star Awards Skills Reference Card. Skills will be taught each week but the club coaches and age managers and will be assessed by the age manager on a regular basis. Achieving the targets in these events will count towards achieving stars consistent with the performance based targets for other events.
Step #3:Claim the star by presenting the sheet at the Registration & Star Awards desk on Saturday morning.
Awards will not be distributed automatically and is the athletes responsiblity to collect their star. Upon presentation of the star sheet, the committee member will verify eligiblity and award the star to the athlete. In cases where a Gold star is achieved, these will be presented as part of Saturday Morning announcements prior to competition commencement.
In the extenuating circumstance where an event cannot be safely run the minimum 5 times in the season to enable achievement of a Gold star (i.e. due to adverse weather), athletes who achieve a performance standard and have attendance over 80% can submit for an exemption review with the committee.
