Parkrun event at Vale Park planned to start later this year
A new weekly Parkrun at Port Vale's stadium in Burslem is set to start later this year - and organisers are looking for volunteers to help launch the event.
Organisers at the Port Vale FC Foundation have been working for over a year to bring more health-focused events to the club and it's hoped the new Parkrun at Vale Park will start in time for the 2025/26 season.
The event has been pushed forward by Port Vale FC Foundation's Gemma Finney and club doctor, Tom Leggett, to encourage healthy living and more community spirit.
Dr Leggett said: "This has been 15 months in the making and phase one is trying to get a Parkrun at Vale Park.
"The lap will go sort of around the back of the stadium, through all the parks and surrounding land, finishing after five kilometres, hopefully in and around the stadium.
"There'll be various times, depending on the time of the year and season fixtures, where there'll be refreshments in parts of the club, opportunities to socialise and be part of the community with the people that have also run it or been helping with the event.
"We're hopefully appealing to an audience that might go to Parkrun already, but really the intention is to find new people who want to come - people who live around the corner, people who might not regularly run."
Parkrun is a weekly event which takes place all over the world at 9am on Saturday mornings, where participants can either run, jog or walk a 5k route.
There are already three Parkrun events in the area at Hanley Park, Trentham Gardens and at The Wammy in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Junior Parkrun, a 2k event solely for 4 to 14-year-olds and their families, has events at Longton Park, Burslem Park, Clough Hall Park and at Lyme Valley Parkway on Sundays at 9am.
The organisers of the Vale Park Parkrun are now looking for volunteers who can help run the events and the Port Vale FC Foundation will be holding training and trial events for anyone interested.
Dr Leggett added: "There are numerous Parkruns across the rest of Stoke-on-Trent and surrounding areas, but there is a little bit missing in our part of the city.
"Every population has its challenges but there's definitely some high levels of inactivity and what we refer to as chronic disease locally so we're looking at an idea to really use the football club as an anchor institution.
"Everybody locally looks up to the football club in various ways, particularly from a sport and activity point of view, so we wondered if there was something that we could try and do to support the community and the fan base in the same way.
"We're looking to try and start this up to coincide with either the beginning of next season or sort of slightly into August or September time.
"Ideally, we can build a pool of volunteers who are keen to sort of help and support on a regular basis and they'll sort of form the core group.
"But as the years hopefully go on, we'll need people who can commit for shorter periods of time, or blocks of the season.
"There are so many roles that will be available so if anybody is sort of interested, they should definitely put their name forward."
Those interested in volunteering to help bring Parkrun to Vale Park are encouraged to contact Gemma via email at [email protected] .
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