Thank a Coach!

The search is underway for New Zealand‟s top volunteer coaches.

The public is being invited to make their nominations for the SPARC Volunteer Coach Awards 2010.

Any grassroots volunteer coach can be nominated. There are three award categories – "student‟, "general‟ and "lifetime‟. The awards will be decided by the Canterbury West Coast Sports Trust.

All nominated coaches receive a letter of thanks from Canterbury West Coast Sports Trust and go into a draw to win one of 17 $100 sports vouchers.

Three nominated coaches in each region are also awarded regional titles. Award winners win a generous supply of Wattie‟s products, coaching apparel from SPARC, and one regional award winner also receives a coach development opportunity from SPARC.

There are more than 70,000 volunteer coaches in New Zealand from students to octogenarians. They volunteer literally millions of hours of their time to the community.

“Add up all their volunteer hours and it‟s just staggering”, says SPARC Chief Executive, Peter Miskimmin.

“Without their massive contribution none of us could enjoy and develop our skills in community sport – our coaches need to be recognised” says Miskimmin.

Nominations can be made online by visiting www.sparc.org.nz/volunteers, or by picking up an entry from Sport Canterbury, Sport Mid Canterbury, Sport South Canterbury and Sport West Coast.

The student category is open to school-aged coaches, while the lifetime category is for people who have devoted 25 years or more to coaching. The general category is for all other community coaches.

CONTACTS

For information about the Awards in our area, please contact: Sport West Coast, Hokitika (03) 756 9010 or Greymouth (03) 768 0775.