We are celebrating #VolunteersWeek by featuring some of our most crucial members each day this week. We asked them a few questions and we hope their answers will provide an insight into the benefits of getting involved in cricket at ABCC. I'm sure you will all agree we would be lost without them.
Warren Smith, age 55, I’ve been associated with the club for many years as a casual spectator and more formally for four months, coaching the under 8s and helping out with painting and tiling at the old and new grounds. I live in the village and wanted to get involved with the club after retiring from work in July 2020; I was very lucky that I worked for a great employer for 28 years and having had a long career with them, I wanted to invest time in doing something for others, so getting involved with the club was a great opportunity to start that journey. I’m spending anywhere between four and eight hours at the club in a given week, split between coaching and working on preparing the new Hanbury pavilion for the season.
I am the under 8s coach and team manager, I’ve been surprised and impressed at how much work goes on behind the scenes and how many people are involved, I attend on Thursday nights for All Stars and Dynamos, then Friday nights for club junior training. I’ve also been recruited to the 5th team this season and will be playing my first game on 13th June, which after 25 years without a game is terrifying and exciting in equal measure!
I love helping other people; I get more satisfaction from that than I do from achieving things for myself, so seeing all those happy faces when we are coaching the juniors is inspiring, particularly after they’ve had such a tough year being schooled from home without their friends around them; to bring them all back together at the club and see them enjoying themselves again is what it should be about. The togetherness of the club coaching team is also great; everyone is willing to lend a hand and if you don’t know something, there is always someone available to show you the way. I don’t know many clubs that have built a whole new pavilion from scratch with volunteers, but somehow the club has managed to make this happen over the last six months, which shows great strength in the wider club team spirit.
More volunteers means more players and juniors enjoying themselves and even greater growth in the community spirit that is already there. It also means all of our teams, male, female, adult and junior, get the best attention they can get from coaches, because more volunteers means the load can be shared more widely; this means more time to develop talent, a great atmosphere for parents to enjoy while they are there, and a safe, encouraging environment for our juniors who are the future of the club and the community; they will make friends now who will be friends for life and in the future, every volunteer who played their part in that legacy can look back on it with huge pride.
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