This last week­end we have well and tru­ly start­ed on the jour­ney towards sum­mer. The AFL Grand Final event at the club was well attend­ed by mem­bers and a great atmos­phere ensued, espe­cial­ly when the win­ning goal was kicked. Thank you to all of our won­der­ful vol­un­teers who helped set up, serve drinks, and then clear up at the end of the game, it was very much appre­ci­at­ed.

The same day, our patrolling sea­son start­ed but Wiamea was reduced to a sur­veil­lance patrol due to the weath­er. Sun­day how­ev­er was a very dif­fer­ent day, with a well-attend­ed Torquay patrol look­ing after the beach in glo­ri­ous spring weath­er, it almost felt like sum­mer! As we enter the new sea­son, the final touch­es are being made to plans for the first Club day on 14 Octo­ber. Win­ter sports have fin­ished and the beach is look­ing great for a fun packed season…not long to go now.

Sandy Clarke is head­ing over to Syd­ney at the end of Octo­ber to take part in the SLSA Awards of Excel­lence after tak­ing out this year’s WA state crown for Vol­un­teer and Offi­cial of the Year, so we wish her the best of luck in bring­ing the nation­al awards home!

I had the priv­i­lege of being select­ed for and attend­ing the Surf Life Sav­ing Aus­tralia Lead­ers Mas­ter­class recent­ly in Ade­laide, join­ing 19 oth­er club lead­ers from around Aus­tralia. We were joined by the SLSA CEO, Adam Weir, and Vice Pres­i­dent John Bak­er who gave their visions on the future direc­tion of Surf Life Sav­ing and also the chal­lenges that we need to over­come. It was great to spend time with the group and amaz­ing to see the sim­i­lar chal­lenges faced by clubs all across the coun­try. I have tak­en away many ideas and thoughts from the week­end that I’ll be shar­ing these with the man­age­ment team.

Our new­ly elect­ed Board mem­bers have leapt straight to their roles and we have had sev­er­al pro­duc­tive meet­ings to date. Our aim is to pro­vide mem­bers with a reg­u­lar sum­ma­ry of our plans as we progress through the sea­son to ensure every­one is on the same page. The Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee and Man­age­ment team have been work­ing extreme­ly hard through­out the win­ter peri­od to ensure every­thing is ready for the sea­son ahead, sup­port­ed by Karen and Jen in the office. Thank you all for your hard work!

I’d like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind every­one that our club is almost entire­ly run by vol­un­teers for vol­un­teers – with­out your help and ded­i­ca­tion what we do wouldn’t be pos­si­ble. Wel­come to all of our new mem­bers, we’d love you to get involved so please reach out and offer your time where you can.

As a final thought head­ing into the new sea­son, I’d like to high­light our club val­ues which I chal­lenge you all to reflect upon as you enjoy the club this year:

• Fam­i­ly – embrace fam­i­ly val­ues and pro­mote inclu­sion
• Safe­ty – pro­mote safe­ty as a part of core activ­i­ties
• Respect – respect and val­ue all indi­vid­u­als and the club com­mu­ni­ty
• Integri­ty – con­duct of self and club affairs, accord­ing to the high­est stan­dards of ethics and behav­iour
• Uni­ty – to oper­ate as a team includ­ing effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with, and involve­ment of, all of our stake­hold­ers
• Excel­lence – strive for excel­lence in every­thing we do.

I look for­ward to see­ing you all on the beach for the first Club day of the sea­son very soon!

Alis­tair Cook
Pres­i­dent

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018 at 3:36 pm and is filed under News.