ACA Development Awards

Recognising oustanding cricket intiatives

The ACA Development Awards provide the opportunity to recognise and reward those clubs and schools who each season have designed and implemented an initiative or program that has been considered outstanding in its category. 

There are five categories and each winner is also then considered for the national award in that category.

The awards you can nominate your club/school/individual for are as follows;

Best Junior Cricket Initiative – recognises a club or school for a cricket activity/initiative providing junior players with a quality cricket experience during the season.

Best Youth Cricket Initiative - recognises a club or school for a cricket activity/initiative providing youth players with a quality cricket experience during the season.

Best Club Cricket Initiative - awarded to a club showing excellence and commitment to developing the game and increasing participation through quality cricket programmes.

Best Women’s Cricket Initiative - recognises a club or school for a cricket activity providing female players with a quality cricket experience during the season.

Service to Cricket Award - awarded to an individual who has made a significant contribution to grassroots cricket over many years.
 

Previous initiatives that have won an award can only reapply if the initiative can be shown to be significantly different than before and is 'bigger and better'.

The award winners for the 2011/12 season were:

• Best Junior Cricket Initiative - Awarded to Birkenhead Cricket Club for their School Cricket Tournament

• Best Youth Cricket Initiative - Awarded to Kelston Girls High School for their Cricket Growth
  

Kelston Girls College first entered a cricket team in the secondary school Wednesday competition in 2011.  The team was entered by a Francois Coetzee, a teacher and cricket enthusiast at the school.  The team was entered in the Senior B grade, where they were placed first equal in their first year of competition.  This year the team moved up a grade to premiere B grade and now there are a couple of girls playing club cricket on Saturday and hopefully this will continue to grow in the future.  In August 2011, Haidee Tiffen started teaching at Kelston Girls and also joined Francois Coetzee in coaching the girls team.  Haidee saw a huge amount of talent within the school and took 2 of the girls along to the Auckland Secondary school trials.  Feala Vaelua was chosen for that team and gained a great deal of confidence and experience.  She also went to the Samoan Women’s team trials where she made the squad, the team is yet to be named.

In term 4 2011, Kelston Girls College was involved in the super 8s programme offered by Auckland cricket.  Both year 9 and 10 Physical Education classes were involved in cricket over 5 weeks and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  This has helped grow the interest of cricket in our junior school.
The team entered the NZCT tournament for the first time.  The girls had a wonderful 2 days of competition.  In between and during games the Kelston Girls displayed the wonderful team spirit and pride they have for representing Kelston Girls with song and dance.  They also enjoyed meeting new friends from other schools.  Haidee Tiffen has also set up an annual cricket exchange with St Kentigerns College, which has been of benefit for both schools.

Francois, along with support from the school, applied to get funding to get an artificial pitch put in at the school.  The girls did not have a home ground to play at and with cricket growing at the school it seemed the next appropriate move for the teams future.

The pitch is in place now and is used every day from girls that play both cricket and kilikiti.  The vision is to continue growing cricket within the school and using the natural talent the girls display from kilikiti to help grow cricket.  The pitch is a huge benefit for both kilikiti and cricket and we hope to get more girls involved in both forms of cricket.

• Best Club Cricket Initiative - Awarded to Ellerslie Cricket Club for their Twilight Champions League Project

• Best Women's Cricket Initiative - Awarded to Di Ching of Cornwall Cricket Club
  

Not only has she enabled an enthusiastic group of non-cricketing women (some without a sporting background) the chance to play the game, she has come up with an event that has been well run and has proved to be very popular. 

The easy option would have been to run a Sunday afternoon hit about and make up teams from those who turned up. This was too simple for Di.  She has set out to find at least four teams of players who were prepared to meet weekly to participate in a full league competition, the inaugural “Have-A-Go league”.  Anyone who has had to run a social team will know how hard it is to get their team to full roster each week.  Di’s problems are multiplied by four and she had to run the competition as well.

What Di has done is establish a format that is workable and is enjoyable for the participants.  She has also established a solid base to build on in the future.  Di has done this by ensuring that the product was appropriate and by creating a network to spread the word.  It has also required more than a few circuits around city parks explaining the opportunity to a non-traditional market.

• Service to Cricket Award - Ross Parlane

To have a look at the range of Development Awards around Auckland Cricket, Previous Winners, and a Description of each award please click here.