Lake City Athletic Club juniors have spent the summer making their presence known at events all over the North Island.
Today,they will compete in their first home event, the Lake City Ribbon Day.
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Lake City children's convenor Kelly Albrecht said athletes from throughout Bay of Plenty and Waikato were expected and while the number of competitors would not be known until the day, she expected about 200 children aged 2 to 14.
"We tried to have one last year but torrential weather meant we had to cancel it. I think it may be four or five years since we had a ribbon day here.
"Not only do we have the high number of children at Lake City but we also have a lot of parents involved now too. On Saturday, we're going to have around 60 volunteers assisting during the day - we wouldn't have had that in the past.
"You just can't run an event without those volunteers and we would like to make sure we, as Lake City, cover all the events. I know some ribbon days they ask other clubs to help out so I'm quite proud that we can do it on our own because it means when other people from other clubs come, they don't have to do any of the work - they can enjoy the day with their children."
Albrecht said the ribbon days were an opportunity for children to put what they had learned at training to use in a slightly more competitive environment.
"It's a chance to step up their training - a lot of the children that are coming are probably the more social children because they haven't really tried or experienced a ribbon day before.
"It's the perfect time for them to jump in and have a go while it's a slightly more relaxed setting and it's on their home turf so they can be more comfortable. It's just that experience of competing.
"It's good for them to compete against children from other clubs as well. They always see each other in their Lake City uniforms and then when you go outside that, there's all these other clubs in different uniforms. It's quite neat to see and have them compete against those others."
The club will also have the help of a group of secondary students at the event which would benefit both parties.
"Rotorua Girls' High School are giving us 15 of their PE students which I think is really cool that they're getting involved. It gives them some hands on experience with event management and running an event.
"I went to Rotorua Girls' and I would have loved to do something like this and get an insight into what it's like in the real world running an event," Albrecht said.
The ribbon day starts at 10am on Saturday at the Rotorua athletics track at Neil Hunt Park and will finish around 3pm.