Earlier this month, AFL Queensland celebrated their 2012 Volunteer of the Year Awards with a dinner ceremony in Brisbane.
The event was attended by some 100 guests, many whom had represented their Queensland affiliate leagues that day at the AFLQ annual Affiliates conference.
MC for the evening was AFL tragic and Channel 10 celebrity Bill MacDonald who did a fantastic job in duly recognising the merit of the event and the wonderful efforts of so many quality volunteers from across the state.
Bill also took on the task of interviewing the Gold Coast Suns (and Hawthorn premiership player) Campbell Brown.
The hard questions in regards to his tribunal appearances and suspensions were not missed upon, in fact AFL Sunshine Coast Juniors League President David Ward prior to the dinner had Campbell cornered quizzing him about his bump on nephew GWS Captain Callan Ward back in 2011 when he was playing with the Western Bulldogs.
The awards recognised coaches and volunteers from across the state that has made outstanding contributions to their football communities.
Awards presented on the night included coach of the year across various age divisions, club and league volunteer of the year of the year and the premier award – AFL Queensland’s overall, volunteer of the year.
Coach of the Year was awarded in junior, youth, senior and female categories with each award recognising excellence in coaching at each level.
For the Sunshine Coast their first gong for the night came in ‘Senior Coach of the Year’.
Nambour and Hinterland Senior Coach, Ben Stanley was honoured as the recipient here.
Ben is in his second year as senior coach at the Blues after a lengthy playing career at Mayne and Maroochydore, starting out as Maroochy Roo junior.
Ben is also the coach of the Matthew Flinders open school boys team who this year were runners up in the Josh Drummond Cup, and if that is not enough Ben is head coach of the Sunshine Coast regional Brisbane Lions Academy.
As female participation grows in AFL, strong female role models are becoming increasingly important and the Sunshine Coast this year had its first ever nominee in female coach of the year category in Maroochydore’s Caitlin Huth – well done Caitlin. .
Club and League Volunteer of the Year awards were also presented in both the junior and senior levels recognising outstanding commitment to the development of the game through off field endeavors.
Sharon Webb and Grant Vayro were presented with junior and senior club volunteer of the year respectively.
Sharon is secretary at the Caboolture club but in 2012 was a key volunteer in helping deliver a new club in her home town Elimbah (just 10 minutes north of Caboolture), recently named the Elimbah Meteors.
Nambour and Hinterland was again the recipient of an award that highlighted a huge year that Club Chairman, Grant Vayro gave to the club.
The club was inundated by floodwaters an incredible number of times over an 18 month period, enough to drown anyone’s enthusiasm but stoically Grant found opportunity for his club to stick its head above water.
Much work needed to be done on the clubhouse and fields to allow the club to meet the needs of its 250 members and with strong leadership Grant saw to it that these needs were met.
Alternate training venues had to be found and many times home and away games had to be relocated at financial cost to the club.
Vayro harnessed the support of many grants and various levels of Government in his endeavors to rebuild, and this as the end goal was achieved with plenty of blood sweat and the occasional tear.
Two AFL Merit awards were also handed down at the awards dinner.
These highly prestigious awards recognise outstanding service to AFL in Queensland with recipients joining a list of less than 600 other winners since 1931.
Michael O’Donoghue (Darling Downs) and Greg Kingston (Mayne AFC) were recognised for their outstanding and ongoing commitment to football.
AFL Queensland Community Programs Coordinator Aaron Hall said that annual awards night was a celebration of coaching’s strong influence on club culture and the direct role of volunteering on creating a positive, family-friendly club environment.
So in detail the 2012 Volunteer of the Year Award Sunshine Coast Nominees and State Winners are:
Award
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Sunshine Coast Nominees
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Winner
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Junior Coach of the Year
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Tim Bagshaw – Sunshine Coast
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Jeremy Sheldrick – Darling Downs
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Youth Coach of the Year
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Trevor Larkins – Sunshine Coast
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Gary Flint – Cairns
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Senior Coach of the Year
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Ben Stanley – Sunshine Coast
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Ben Stanley – Sunshine Coast
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Female Coach of the Year
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Caitlin Huth – Sunshine Coast
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Janie McCullagh – Brisbane Juniors
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Junior club Volunteer of the Year
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Jamie Glover – Sunshine Coast
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Sharon Webb – Brisbane
Juniors
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Senior Club Volunteer of the Year
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Grant Vayro – Sunshine Coast
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Grant Vayro – Sunshine Coast
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Junior League Volunteer of the Year
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Debbie Linton – Sunshine Coast
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Steve Barlow – Wide Bay
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Senior League Volunteer of the Year
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John Hollander – Cairns
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AFL Merit Awards
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Michael O’Donoghue Greg Kingston
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AFL Queensland Volunteer of the Year
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Steve Barlow
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Last Modified on 22/01/2013 12:10