2024 AGM President's Address

Last season was probably the most successful of the last decade or so, the highlight being great registration numbers, senior teams in four of five grades and a women’s team and we had seven junior teams. Four out of five junior teams who were eligible made the Grand Final, with the U11, U13 and U15 teams all winning in thrilling games. We also won the junior club championship.

Our fifth grade men’s successfully took out the premiership in a thrilling Friday night Grand Final and we were competitive in all other grades. Special thanks to all of last season’s committee, the Senior VP Ben Dries and Mark Barnes, Women’s VP Robina Boothe and Junior VP Rob Tunningley who all ran tight ships. Kelly Hackett did everything for everyone, including as treasurer and canteen management. Aaron Oshyer made the transition to a new registration system seamless and the good news is that rego for the coming season will be open next week. Crystal, Sophie and Kiera did a great job with uniforms. Mitch ensured that we did not run out of gear. Dave Dries assisted with the website and club legend Shane Broomfield managed the public officer duties.

Cal McNicol has put huge energy into refurbishing the home diamond at Kambah and Sport and Rec will be levelling the field with topsoil next week before a full oversow with an all season grass. This will give us a great surface to play on this coming year and the year after we will have a full warm season grass diamond as the couch grass takes over.

One of our main sponsors, GymQuip, again provided us with $2000 worth of match day VIP vouchers. In addition we picked up the Hellenic Club as our major sponsor and special thanks to them for providing the room for this meeting tonight. We are also very grateful for the assistance from Nikias Diamond who provided machinery for the early stages of the ground refurbishment.

Junior numbers were strong and due to the dedication of a number of coaches, we took out the junior club championships for the second year running. Our first, second and third grade fielded very young teams and a number of young guys played multiple games every weekend. In first grade we were competitive deep into most games with the top teams, and the addition of import Rentaro and his working holiday mate Ryoma to the team ensured that we had some great victories throughout the season. Special thanks to Robina, Cal, Julian and Gabe for hosting our import, Ryoma and making him feel so welcome.

Special thanks also to Dave Fisher for coaching the first grade team, assisted by Ben Dries and Hamish McGuire. This is a huge weekly commitment every Saturday.

Financially, the club was stable, and the fundraising activities through the Bolsta App were a great injection of funds. Canteen sales were slow due to limited opportunity to open and special mention to Kelly in particular for spending so much time running both junior canteens at Narrabundah and senior canteens.

I’ll take this opportunity to explain a strategy which involves all clubs building juniors numbers. We are organising a Come and Try day at Narrabundah on 8 September. And there is a $300 prize incentive for club kids to bring a mate along. We are also giving away 100 baseball gloves to kids aged 7 to 10 in an effort to quickly build the Machine Pitch and Little League Minor age groups for the coming season. Our aim is to add 100 kids across all junior clubs, which is in addition to a large number who will be joining for GSTB last season.

We are anticipating strong numbers for both juniors and seniors this season and I am expecting great things to happen in 2024-25. Put a feather in your cap.