Cathy has stepped into the role of President this year, and her willingness to jump in and just get things done, no matter how challenging, keeps us all moving forward. Cathy’s care and compassion for every person in our Club is what makes our Club such a happy and friendly place to be.

Everyone in our Club thanks Cathy for her hard work throughout the year.

Read Cathy’s President’s report below:

The season may have ended in a manner that was disappointing due to covid lockdowns but we still consider the overall season as being successful. We did manage to play 70 percent of our season and we are most grateful for this. As we wind up the season we have put in place an online Presentation that is unique for us and we are most grateful for the work that Lindsay Brown our secretary has done to make it possible.

The season has been a successful one for the club despite the challenges we have faced in a pandemic. We have navigated the covid requirements and the challenges brought also by the weather both rain and the cold days we experienced this year.

There are numerous people to thank for the running of our club. We first thank the hard working committee who run our competition each season. The committee works hard all year round with planning and organising what is required to run a well organised club. A special mention of myself goes to Lindsay Brown, every season he does a brilliant job, giving above and beyond what is required.

As President I would especially like to thank all those who put up their hand to coach and manage our junior and senior teams. We truly appreciate your participation in helping our junior competition to run smoothly. Another huge thanks goes to our Umpires, like Ian Mcleod, Elijah Alchin, Marcel Le Grange, Lindsay, Wayne Anderson, Cathy Churchill and the many juniors who stepped up to umpire our games each week. Ian also was invaluable as a mentor to junior
umpires.

Of course we must say a special thankyou to Pauline who runs the best canteen in the Bay. We thank all the people that helped Pauline as it’s impossible to run a canteen without helpers.

We were successful in obtaining two grants this year, through the initiative and hard work of Roxy Kabayama. The grants were for encouraging and motivating our junior girls and the other to provide skills for our coaches. Our club has certainly benefited from these grants and we also thank Roxy for the great job she has done in promoting our game in the media, lifting our profile and players in our local paper and social media.

We started the season with our Twilight competition in which 8 teams participated in our senior competition and our junior competition had a good number of players who enjoyed a skills session then friendly games. We thank Lindsay, Kai and Luke Payne who ran the junior competition.

Our Winter competition was delayed in getting started due to rain and floods, with a concern our fields may not be playable but with a determined effort by the club we managed to fill in dents and holes with a club ‘stomping’ of dirt into the fields. Once started the season progressed well and we believe the overall competition this season for our juniors and seniors has been successful. We made some changes in our starting time slots this year to allow players to play in other grades, this enabled players to have extra experience and supported teams that were short on the day.
We have changed the competition to Grades rather than age groups to allow players to play in a grade that suits their skill and confidence. With all changes there are the positives and things to be worked on with each season.

Our Nelson Bay club is part of the Hunter Association , along with other clubs as Maitland and Cessnock. Our club is represented by Cathy Churchill and Kate Lord. This year our Hunter Association was represented at the NSW state championships in the Un18s champions in Illawarra, Un 15s girls in Lithgow, Un13 boys in Parks. Our club is very proud of the way our players represented themselves at these carnivals. We are especially proud of Gryphon Julian who was selected in the State un13 boys squad, a much deserved selection.

A special mention to Kate Jenner our regional coach from Hockey NSW. Even though she had commitments with the Australian Hockey team this year, she was regularly in touch with our club and helping our coaches with our online skills training and organising skills sessions with other NSW coaches.

With some sadness I wish to advise you that Nicole Le Grange has stepped down from our committee for next season. Nicole has been part of the Nelson Bay club for 20 years and even when she stopped playing, she continued serving the club by belonging to our committee. She was our President for some years and this year was responsible for our sponsors. We will miss her on Saturday mornings and her cheerful and friendly manner and her concern for our safety and wellbeing.

There is more hockey on the way over summer with Indoor hockey at the PCYC and other training sessions with COD and of course in Feb we start our Twilight hockey. So much still to look forward to.

It has been a privilege to be President of Nelson Bay Hockey Club and I invite any parent and player to join our committee to ensure the continue running of our wonderful club.

Cathryn Churchill