SDTTL Awards 2007

The Trevor Bloxom Award

The recipient of this years Trevor Bloxom Award is George Drum of The Hullbridge Sports Association.

George started off the season in Division 4 with 6 wins out of 6, 3 against Warehouse C (who ultimately finished in 2^nd place): a massive improvement over the previous season, when he won 8 games out of 27. Unfortunately, illness then struck and he has had to miss the rest of the season: we are all hoping to see him back soon. This award is about good improvement, but above all, good sportsmanship on and off the table. Despite the hardships he has suffered, he has at all times showed top levels of sportsmanship and is an example to everyone on how our sport should be played.

The Brench & Shirley Moon Award

This years award went to Janet and Bob Shingleton-Smith of the Hullbridge Sports Association, members who do an amazing amount of work for our League.

Janet monitors our “Winter League” results each week, prepares weekly reports to the Evening Echo and to our Web Site, that are accurate and are combined with a subtle sense of humor, that make great reading. She also is there to help at any time with our Quizzes, Closed Championships, AGM and our Handbooks and much more.

Bob runs our Inter League; Ranking, Results, Registration etc and is always there to help whenever required, particularly at our annual Closed Championships and again, much more.

The Kath Peer Award

This year’s recipient of the Kath Peer Award went to Vince Gurney of RESSC. Like many of us, Vince has gradually got into the administration and coaching areas of Table Tennis and over the past 2 years has put back so much into our sport. He passed his Level 2 coaching course, became the Honorable General Secretary of Basildon, is involved with Hill Dowsett of Chelmsford in the Essex Junior scene and if you need help he is always at hand.

A good example of this was this year’s Closed Championships; for once we were suddenly really short staffed on the control desk, only Ken left. Lou was on holiday and not back until the Sunday and Jayne felt too ill to continue on the Saturday; Vince stept in to save the day.

The Mike Watts Award

This year recipient is unusual in that for the first time went to an employee of the ETTA (the English Table Tennis Association).

Greg Yarnell arrived in the Southend area, 2 years ago with the aimed of improving the development of juniors in the Eastern area of England and more specifically within the Southend and surrounding Districts. He also joined the Rawreth Table Tennis club and became a fine leading Premier standard player. He has been extremely active since moving to Southend. We are bombarded with all the latest news in Table Tennis, coaching, umpiring, and a number of various other events and he keeps us very well informed locally, with what is going on in the world of Table Tennis. He has gradually developed links with local schools and hopes by the end of this year to have introduced up to 3000 youngsters locally to our sport. He arranged for a leading Essex professional, Aaron Fennell, to go into local schools for 6 weeks to set up training schemes and then from that, he has built up a Group at St. Bernard’s School, Westcliff, to concentrate on youngsters who have potential: a massive achievement.