Supporters
End of Season Awards and Presentaiton Night
It was a great end of season awards night on Friday the 27th at Balmain Rowing Club with its stunning view of the harbour and the twinkling lights. This year we managed to arrange better weather than the torrential rain of last year!
It was great to see everyone there having a good time in normal clothes and we especially welcomed our visitors, Will Calwell and Stelio Pappas from PLC and Ben Board from Tara, who joined us for the evening.
Awards -Rowing
The highlight of the evening of course is the awards for this year, and everyone was very pleased to see the following members recognised for their achievements.
Open Women’s- Freya Warner van Dijk - In presenting the award to Freya, Sarah Ellis acknowledged her achievement and also spoke about how good it was to be able to take Freya and the Opens through a complete cycle of training and have them develop as rowers and club members.
Open Men’s - With the squad being depleted by travel, study and work commitments this year no award was made with the focus being on rebuilding for the coming season.
Masters Men - Gabe Haythornthwaite. Gabe was completely surprised and wondered what he’d done wrong to get the award by Rowena Stewart standing in for Andrew Patterson who is away!
Masters Women - Renate Ijpma was named as the winner of the Women’s Masters awards. Renate said that this was her second year competing for Drummoyne, having stayed on when Balmain returned to their renovated club house and she was enjoying it immensely.
Para Rowing Women’s - Stephanie Walker won the Para Women’s Rower award this year. In presenting the award Kathleen noted that this is her first year of focusing on the 1000 metres distance as a master with age handicapping and also is rowing in a mixed pair with Parry Mouhtaris from Glebe. She has also been fortunate to have Ash Brooking as a coach as well.
Well done, Steph!
Para Rowing Men’s - No award made this year.
Overall Points Score, CR McNiven Trophy – Renate Ijpma also won the overall point score trophy. Of the thirty races that Renata entered two were not included, she was awarded 1st in 18, 2nd in 7, 3rd in 2 and 5th in 1 event - an outstanding result for her second season at Drummoyne.
We then come to the Volunteer Awards – This year there were four nominees
Alex Warner - Past captain and driver of all things infrastructure, safety and shed management – particularly building an organised process and system for liaison between everyone in the shed - the schools, captain and all the supporters through the captain’s crew.
Doug Stewart – A quiet achiever around the club and, although not rowing at the moment he is always on hand to helping out - painting, screwing things into the wall, arranging artwork, keeping bees with Rowena and being ever ready to lend a helping hand in a quiet unassuming way and being a great backup to the vice-captain!
Deidre Edmonds – Has been a constant in the club in the background helping out at Regattas with Hospitality and catering, organising and liaising between different groups of people, welcoming visitors to the club on regatta days and organising the cleaning teams. This all helps to build relationships across our club – and keep the place clean and cared for.
Michael Wong – Mike has the unenviable task of chasing up everybody’s entry fees - this is a fairly time-consuming task as I’m sure we all think that we rowed less than what the entry fees say! To reconcile the entries and get the invoices out Mike allocates a weekend, two screens, a computer and lots of food - but it’s something we can’t do without.
A big shout out now to everyone who made the service so exceptional - Antony on the bar and the catering and venue prep. team including Rowena, Bridget, Ben, Julie, Leonie, Alessandra and Bianca.
A great night and a wonderful way to finish up the season before we launch into our next event being the JB Sharp Regatta on Sunday the 20th Of July!