President's Prattle - November 2017
What a great night it was last night at the City of Mandurah Sports Awards for 2017. Gerda Williams was nominated by the Club for the Senior Sports Star of the Year Award following her stellar year of swimming that included coming home from the Auckland World Masters with 5 “Gold” medals. She is the state's dominant swimmer in her age group this year and holds multiple state and national records. We were proud to have such a strong nominee, but unfortunately she was pipped by a karate expert…evidently achieving a 7th dan at the age of 75 is also a pretty big sporting deal. None-the-less it was a pleasure to share this moment with Gerda, and thankful to be able to have such a strong nominee in the mix!
An additional and unexpected joy was to follow. The City of Mandurah Male Volunteer of the Year Award was named the “Ken Phillips Volunteer of the Year” Award in recognition of the great contribution our Life Member gave to local sport. Ken’s wife Gerda, and children Helen and Tom were present to witness this honour and Tom represented the family in presenting this Award. Our Club then presented Gerda with a wonderful photo book of Ken’s life in our Mannas group. A big thanks to Steve Fergs for this wonderful memorial. It is still very hard to read this without a tear, but it is a wonderful memorium.
It seems that the “Doddies Dash” committee forgot to have a position for weather organisation, so this is now to be postponed till Dec 10th and adjoin our luncheon Christmas festivities. Evidently this Saturday is not looking good??? Hope the date change allows some more members to enter?
We are only a week away from our last Club Challenge of the year at the Melville pool. We have targeted this as one to win, so we again call all hands on deck. Every swim scores points, so let’s get a monster team on pool deck for this one. Let Cap’n Jen or Coach Mike know the events you wish to commit to now, and join in the fun.
Our new change rooms at Doddi’s are now open. We just await the external showers. When the City gets final completion we will get access to our small store room which will be very handy. Graham is already thinking about what our hot shower system for next winter will look like. We sure thank Graham, Paul, Joel and others for providing hot water throughout this past winter to help relieve the cold.
We are now only a few months from our AGM so keep on the look out for likely committee members who can continue to build the club.
Well, as summer approaches, enjoy your swimming and look after each other.
Steve C