Monday 28th November 2011
President's Report / Secretary's Report
This has been another very good year for Southern Table Tennis with all aspects of the club running very smoothly and participation rates increasing slightly. There have been no major changes to the running of our organisation other than the adoption of a child safety policy as required by government legislation. We have further strengthened our financial position and continue to have the same people helping out around the club and serving on the executive committee.
Our competitions have all been run successfully and we have a record 84 players for the current spring season. I believe that one of the reasons our competitions are being so well supported is the innovative and flexible approach we have taken each season in order to meet the needs of the majority of our players. The only problem which we continue to experience is in having to find a large number of reserve players each week due to regular players being unavailable. The task of finding reserve players is becoming more difficult and we are often asking our keener players to play on two nights per week. I would like to thank the coordinators and competition committee members for all their hard work in organising our competitions this year. It can be a challenging job.
The Tuesday night junior program continues to be well supported with well over 20 players attending each night despite the fact we have not done any promotional work. We held coaching sessions for the whole year as well as introducing a team based competition for school terms 2 and 4. For the terms that we only ran the coaching program we were running at the limit of how many children we could accommodate. However when we run the junior competition there is the capacity to increase our numbers significantly and we should look at some promotional work for this next year.
The Tuesday and Friday morning social sessions continue to be well attended with only a few spare tables being available most Tuesday mornings. The number of people attending however can vary a lot depending on a number of different factors. It would be good to see the numbers attending improve even further and this is another one of our activities that could benefit from some targeted promotional work. I would once again like to thank Don LUGG for his dedication and enthusiasm in running these sessions.
It has been a very steady couple of years for Southern Table Tennis with the same core group of people running the club in an efficient manner. We are in a very enviable position with good participation numbers and a sound financial base. The challenge is to continue to keep improving our club and to increase participation rates even further. I would like to thank everybody who does contribute to the running of Southern Table Tennis for all you have done this past year as it is appreciated.Marcel Storken
President
This year I thought I would depart from the traditional approach of presenting the Secretary’s Report in reviewing what has happened at Southern during the course of 2011. I am sure this will be adequately covered in the President’s Report prepared by Marcel Storken. I want to take this opportunity to look at the journey of Southern Table Tennis and as it currently exists.
In the current economic climate, I think Southern Table Tennis is performing exceptionally well on 3 important fronts; financial, membership and volunteers. In comparison to other table tennis bodies in South Australia, Southern can certainly hold its head up high. The stadium and facilities present as a great asset and venue, Southern conduct well run and patronised competitions and excel in its contribution to community engagement in delivering coaching and opening its doors to the community at large.
Financially, Southern currently operates without any loan, all major debts have been paid. On reflection, since moving to the dedicated table tennis venue at Wilfred Taylor Reserve, the initial skeleton of the stadium has seen several enhancements. These include insulation and wooden flooring, a major extension encompassing wet areas, disabled facilities, meeting room, office and store room. All areas of the facility are now air conditioned at significant expense, but appreciated by the membership during the heat of summer. Aside from facility enhancements, there has also been significant equipment replacement be that the competition tables, spectator seating, the coaching trailer or a photocopier for the office. Although I have no idea of this total financial commitment, but it must be nudging half a million dollars. Quite impressive.
Membership, while numbers have certainly decreased when compared to say 15 years ago, and we have seen the demise of the Winter Competition as run on a club basis, the last few years have seen some stability in membership numbers across all three seasons of competition. It is also pleasing to see the regeneration of the junior program, the stability in numbers and juniors feeding in to the main competition.
Volunteers, probably not as many as Southern would like to share the overall workload, never-the-less, someone is available to meet all commitments. These commitments include; opening the stadium 7 sessions a week for practice, social play, competition and the junior program, opening the venue for hire and maintenance of the facility. Volunteers also extend to parents who may assist on Tuesday nights as part of the junior program. The Executive Committee membership is primarily made up of life members. The problem still exists, ‘new blood’ is required as part of the necessary transition / succession management process. Any ideas?
Congratulations to all those who have been part of the Southern Table Tennis journey to that which it is now, both as a facility, its membership and its role in the community. A job well done.
Maurice Quinn
Secretary