Brett (Teddy-Bear) Williams. Brett
has been involved in softball since beginning playing as a
young man aged 6. Both his father the
(late John ) and Johnetta encouraged all the three children
to be involved in sport. Brett has been with the Papanui Club
for some 20 years and all those years playing, many for the
premier team and more recently in the Presidents Tigers team.
Still occasionally turns out for the premier team and hasn’t
lost any of the ability he had. Brett is now following in
his
late father’s footsteps as President of the Papanui
Club.
Lesley Byrne. Les followed her
husband’s interest in softball when the children were
young. She coached and held Club Captain roles with the now
defunct Woolston Club. From there she became Secretary of
the Junior Advisory Board, or what it was called then, the
Schoolchildren’s Board. And spent many happy years with
Jean Gould as Chairperson and Doug Chee as Treasurer.
On her retirement from JAB she went to the Papanui Club where
some of her family were involved and took over the role of
then the
Secretary. In the years that Brett’s father was President
Les was the Secretary and the role evolved to that of Chief
Executive Officer.
When Brett and Les first joined the Papanui Softball Club
there were only three mens teams, one women’s team and
five children’s teams. Since then the club has grown
to seven men’s teams, six womens teams, one mixed team,
two slowpitch teams and
24 junior teams, a total of 40 teams.)
Both Brett and Les were responsible with Errol Byrne, Adie
Waitere and Sean Hanton of initiating the very successful
John Williams Memorial Tournament for premier grade female
players.
Anne Marie Hoogenboezem. Anne Marie
has been with the club for some eight years and has handled
roles from coaching juniors to coaching open graders and holding
the role of Junior club Captain following Janaya Abelsons
move to Wellington.
Anne Marie is responsible for our first slowpitch team in
the competition on Thursday nights.
Tony Peters who has been coaching teams in the club for many
years now and before that played in the premier team. Tony
can be seen around the park doing odd jobs and helping others.
Ash Maindonald who has come back into the Papanui Club and
with his wife Jack coaches the T Ball Growlers team and also
plays in Colin Sutherlands Reserve team.
The Club welcomes back our important Straycats
Team under the guidance of Wayne Inwood. This team
has been with the club for approximately 10 years and with
some different players but still the nucleus of the original
team the late John Williams named “the Hockey team”.
Then we have the Tigers Team which
is another group of guys who have been playing together for
some time now, but many of them are ex premier players and
a bit of a “whose who” in the club, including
our President.
And talking about the Whose Who of the club, we then welcome
back the Wildcats Team and a special
welcome back to Russell Kerrigan. He had a year with bowls
but found the action too fast for him.
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