Sport Godalming News - January ’08

Chairman - David Anderson

Vice Chairman - Simon Crowther

Secretary - Bill Braid

Treasurer - Malcolm Richardson   

Ray Cotton, Clive Dawson

Danny Denningberg, Peter Harris,

Roger Humphrey, Byron Grainger-Jones, Edward Le-Brun, Michelle Trudgeon

 

Meetings are usually held every other month and Clubs are encouraged to inform the Secretary or any Committee Member regarding any matter with which we may be able to assist.

The dates of the Meetings are fixed annually to 31 March and may be viewed by clicking here.

 

 

The main thrust of Sport Godalming's activity over the past year has been the organisation and launch of the ‘Go for Gold’ initiative. The scheme was launched at Charterhouse Club last September and was well supported by the local media, politicians and sports organisations. The response was fantastic with the first phase culminating in the presentation of a £500 award to each of fourteen young locally based athletes. Their ages ranged from thirteen to twenty-three years old, representing a variety of indoor and outdoor activities on water and dry land. The presentations were made by Jeremy Hunt MP at Charterhouse Club, ably supported by the Mayors of Waverley and Godalming Town. I am hopeful that many of you will have read the local press coverage and recognise the benefits to Godalming.

Only two weeks after presenting the awards the Surrey Advertiser back page lead story reported that seventeen year old Jordan Huggins, a pupil from King Edward's School Witley, reached the final of the national indoor 60 metre sprint and raced against Dwain Chambers. I quote from the article as follows. "He (Jordan Huggins) saluted the support of King Edward's who "help me keep my grades up" and the cash boost from Sport Godalming, saying: "They believe in me and the money is a big   This is a classic example of what we hoped to achieve via this initiative and we should feel proud that there is such a wealth of young talent within our community.

The Surrey Advertiser will continue to follow these young people and report on their progress. Sport Godalming intends to market the initiative to a wider audience and have just written to local businesses in an effort to encourage financial participation. We shall produce window stickers and posters and encourage groups to organise fund raising events to support the scheme. This is not a one-off. We go on to 2012 and even to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. It is important to remember that this fund is money raised entirely from within our community on a voluntary basis, and not from any government scheme. This is a ‘Godalming’ first and we should take a lot of civic pride from that.

Our last awards evening, November 2007, was a great success with former Olympic athlete, Roger Black, making the presentations and giving a truly inspirational talk. We are working on the next one and would welcome assistance with a ‘sports personality’ contact. It is always the most difficult item of the event to tie down, so any help would be greatly appreciated.  Many thanks are extended to our new co-sponsor, Downs Solicitors.

Membership at just over thirty subscribers is at record numbers. We are hopeful that the recent good publicity will encourage even more of our local clubs and sports organisations to join. As ever we are on the lookout for fresh, energetic committee members to help maintain our momentum.

Currently we are keeping abreast of the progress of the existing leisure centre refurbishment, which has been approved by Waverley Borough Council. Whilst the £2,600,000 expenditure is to commence soon it is nevertheless disappointing that Godalming will not have a new modern leisure centre. There are issues that we will follow up on, regarding provision of a teaching pool and spectator facilities for the swimming clubs.

As chairman I am personally working on ‘Active Waverley’ which has evolved from a Community Sports Network initiative via The Active Surrey Sports Partnership. Our role is to facilitate participation at many different levels of sport throughout a variety of age and social areas.

Sport Godalming extends its thanks to Waverley Borough Council and Godalming Town Council for their continued support.

Please refer to our web site, www.sportgodalming.org.uk, for regular updates and information.

David Anderson,

Chairman, Sport Godalming.

March 2008

Peter Martin (GTC)

John Sandy (Go Godalming)

Ross Welland (WBC)

 

David Gill (WBC)

Christina Hales (WBC)

 

Updated 28.06.2007