Page 5 - West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club Yearbook 2015-16

PRESIDENT’S REPORT
My first year as President gives me a good opportunity to reflect on the wonderful legacy left under Barry McDonald’s leadership and to look to how we can build on this platform.
Before looking to the future, this season has been a tremendous success. The growth in Junior boys numbers to a record 40 Teams exceeded our previous record of 35 Teams achieved in 2008/09. This shows both the quality of our Junior Leadership under Julian Bish and the success of our Schools Development Program during July that introduced cricket to over 1,000 boys and girls at our local schools.
Our Girls Division under Graham Chivers has also been a tremendous success. Barry commented in his Report on the growth in numbers (70 girls now playing) and this is due largely to the vision, energy and passion of Graham to provide cricket as a genuine sporting option for Girls in our Community.
This year also saw us give In2Cricket (Kanga) a trial after an earlier unsuccessful experience in 2006.
The reason for this change is that it fills a recruitment gap by allowing us to be included into the CNSW promotion using www.Playcricket.com. That is now the main promotional approach by CNSW. This means that every person who does a website search for In2Cricket in our area sees our Club. In the absence of this visibility other Clubs were identified. What was different this time is that we were allowed to retain our Club identity so that the transition was seamless whilst allowing us access to the promotional activity of CNSW.
Bill Peterkin took the Leadership from Patrick Chensee and the background support of John Coulthard who did a wonderful job for many years. Our Kanga numbers were slightly down on last season (from 103 to 87) and this was mainly due to the graduation of a large number of children to the U8s.
I would also like to call-out the performance of our A1 Grade side who lost their Semi Final and with it the opportunity to win 5 successive Premierships. While missing out on this opportunity we are very proud of the Team under James Makin’s leadership who showed their class in the way they played the Semi Final and also their off-field support in sponsoring 4 children with a disability to play Blowfly Cricket. Well done boys.
Looking to the future, our Club Executive spent a lot of time in reviewing our Club strategy for the next 3 years. The focus areas of our strategy are:
• In2Cricket (Kanga) – sustainability, transition to juniors, volunteer effort
• Juniors – Boys and Girls (participation, retention, coaching)
• Seniors – performance, Juniors transition to Seniors,
• Community partnership / brand – Schools Development, Diversity, partnerships
• Leadership and succession – Governance, Risk Management, Volunteering and website development.
We are also developing a new Club website that that will deliver a new window into our Club that uses the best available technology, allows better use of Social Media and opens up options for Sponsorship and more interactive use.
Our Club is in good shape and we have a plan for the future that builds on the great legacy of past leadership and volunteers. Next season will provide another opportunity for us to build for our future.
Andrew Miedler President
4