New Trustees and New Initiatives for 2017

New Trustees Don Oliver Youth Sports Foundation trustees Colleen Acton and Marc and Steve Oliver have had an exceptionally busy year reinvigorating the Foundation.

“We have added three fantastic new trustees who increase our capabilities enormously and give us confidence that we can step up to a whole new level in the next few years,” reports Dai Bindoff, DOYSF chairman.

Stefan Crooks, Angela Hurst and Mike Ocego have joined the DOYSF board. Stefan Crooks is the owner and CEO of Westie Pies (a DOYSF gold sponsor) among other food businesses and has been the driving force behind the revitalisation of the suburbs rugby and their home ground. Angela Hurst is marketing manager of The Trusts and the principal architect of the Million Dollar Mission. The Trusts is Associate Sponsor of the DOYSF. Mike Ocego is the operations manager of The Trusts Arena. “These trustees give us a much enhanced capability in a number of fields, especially fund raising and sponsor seeking, the website and social media and the organisation of various events that we run. In due course we expect the team to be further strengthened with the return of Alan Parry who is on sabbatical in the UK.

Awards Dinner 2017 events include the Awards dinner which we eplan to make a truly glittering event in the West’s social calendar so that we pay due honour to the fantastic young people who, year after year, show us the depth of world class talent in our community. This year we’re honoured to have former Waitakere Mayor Sir Bob Harvey assisting us with the organisation of the dinner. Sir Bob was a founder trustee of the DOYSF 20 years ago and is now an Ambassador.

Helping Young Westie Athletes Prepare For some years now we’ve also been running a series of workshops designed to help young Westie athletes prepare better for their sporting futures: subjects include how to get picked, nutrition, performance development, being drug free, Confidence in a Crowd.

New Initiatives “We have a very exciting initiative under development as this story goes to press, which we believe will make these workshops even more meaningful and absolutely invaluable. They will be open to all young west Auckland sports people and not just scholars,” reports Dai Bindoff.

Secondary Schools Don Oliver Youth Sport Foundation Honours Board The Foundation is investigating options to provide all West Auckland secondary schools with a Don Oliver Youth Sport Foundation Honours Board with names of all students who have been Don Oliver Scholars, many of whom have gone on to the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. Several have become world champions and others have been very achievers internationally.