Page 5 - West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club Yearbook 2016-17

PRESIDENT’S REPORT
By any measure this has been an outstanding season. Standout achievements have been:
Under Bill Peterkin, our In2Cricket (Kanga) has thrived with 123 boys and girls playing. To put this in context, in 2012/13 we participated in the Association run U8s Competition that drew its numbers from our Kangas. This season we still managed to have 123 children playing Kanga and had 3 U8 Teams.
To see the T20 Blast girls at James Henty on Friday nights with Graham Chivers being coach, DJ and parent with the girls laughing and having fun this has been a wonderful success. Add to this the Sixers Competition for our U13s and U17s we are on an upward path.
Julian Bish has provided outstanding leadership of our boys. With 36 teams last season our retention rate remains high and the close relationship built with the Seniors to support transition has been a highlight.
In Seniors, under Steve Quanborough in his first year as Director, we won our first Club Championship since 2008/09 – a competition that is difficult for large clubs to win under the complex calculation formula. We also had 8 of our 10 Seniors Teams make the Semi Finals with 5 Teams playing in the Grand Finals. We had 2 Premiers (B1 and C1) with A1 missing out by just 1 run.
Our Schools program has been a tremendous success allowing us to build strong partnerships with our local schools and allowing us to introduce cricket to over 1,000 local children. This has been the single biggest driver in allowing us to build sustainability through our grass roots development.
Pink Stumps Day continues to be a success. Barry has commented on the success of our U9s in driving this initiative. This season our U15s took this to another level during the Armidale Country carnival where they initiated and then ran a Pink Stumps day to coincide with McGrath Foundation day at the Sydney Test raising $2,000.
Our new website has also been a significant advancement. Our old website did a very good job since being launched in 1998. Andrew Fiedler has done a great job in sourcing a developer, building requirements and driving delivery. We now have a website that gives us the platform to take our communication to the next level. It also opens up sponsorship opportunities and to allow our website to be revenue producing.
The season has also had its challenges. Lack of grounds and training facilities are a problem now and will only become a bigger issue over time as population density increases. Council amalgamations will also create issues where new relationships will need to be created and the important role we play in the Community may need increased focus. We are already working closely with Baulkham Hills Council to allow us to get access to grounds in our catchment area.
President’s Award (Jim Fuggle Trophy)
Outside Life Membership, the President’s Award is our most important award. We are a volunteer community based cricket club and without our volunteers we do not have a Club. The winner this year is Julian Bish, our Juniors Director.
Photo: Julian Bish (centre) receiving the President’s Award from Andrew Miedler (left) with Barry McDonald – Juniors Presentation Day @ Oakhill Drive Public School 18th March 2017.
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