At the Masters Swimming NSW Annual General Meeting earlier this month, Alison Johnston was named as the winner of the 2017 Masters Swimming NSW Club Administration Award.
The award is presented by Masters Swimming NSW for a year of outstanding contribution to club administration.
Alison joined our club in 2010, and Masters Swimming NSW in 2011. In 2012 she was elected onto club’s Committee. She is currently a member of the Club Committee, our Competition Committee and the club’s Assistant Secretary.
Alison is an invaluable and hardworking member of our club. As with most people in an administration role, much of the work she does goes unseen by the members of the club. Members would only realise the true level of her contribution if the work that she does was left undone.
Alison does a huge amount of work in her role as a member of the Competition Committee. For our club races every week during the summer season, Alison collates all the online entries and manual entry cards, enters them into the computer, seeds the events and produces the weekly program. Alison even contacts swimmers who have entered incorrectly or may have forgotten to enter a club championship, so they don’t miss out on swimming the event. At the club races each Saturday, she works as a Recorder, producing the results from each race and checking any club championship records which may have been broken.
For any external meets that our club attends, Alison always ensures copies of the meet programs are placed on the club notice board to encourage members to enter. She follows up with emails to members, and with numerous reminders as the closing date approaches. Alison also selects the club’s relay teams for the State Championships and the Relay Meet spending a huge amount of time working on team combinations, to ensure all our members can get a relay swim, before submitting them to the meet organiser. Alison also acts as our club’s Endurance 1000 Recorder, entering all our eligible swims from our Club Races into the Endurance 1000 system.
Alison was the key driver behind the hosting of our inaugural BPS meet in February 2017. She did all the research into what was required to host the meet, developed the draft meet program and organised all the visiting Technical Officials.
Alison works with the other members of the club’s Competition Committee to set the season program for our Club Races, review the Competition Rules and By-Laws, select swimmers for teams, and determine the winners of Awards at our club’s Annual Presentation Evening.
As a member of the Club Committee, Alison is the Club’s Assistant Secretary, backing up the Secretary by assisting with correspondence, and filling in when the Secretary is unable to attend a club meeting. Alison also submits grant applications on behalf of the club and has been successful in securing important funding and equipment for the club’s activities.
We are very grateful for all the work Alison does and congratulate her on winning the 2017 Masters Swimming NSW Administration Award.
* Alison was not at the Masters Swimming NSW AGM, so the award was presented to her at our 2018 Presentation Evening by Kerryn Blanch, President of Masters Swimming NSW.