Volunteers' Week: Coaching role can be hard to juggle but has its own rewards

5 June 2008

Volunteers' Week, which runs from June 1 to 7, is the UK's annual celebration of the work volunteers do. To mark the event, here we highlight some of the volunteering work taking place within sport in Derbyshire.

Philip Bentley is one of several volunteers at Buxton Cricket Club, and began helping out when his son took an interest in the game.

Philip has played cricket himself for more than 25 years, and over the past seven years has got more involved with the club and Buxton and taken pride in helping to build up the junior sides.

Working full-time during the day and then helping out as junior co-ordinator and doing some coaching on a voluntary basis can be difficult to juggle, but has its own rewards, says Philip.

“The U17s play on a Monday night and there is coaching on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I work full-time during the week and the occasional Saturday and also play cricket on a Saturday, so it’s really busy from April to September – you have to have an understanding wife!”

Many of the other volunteers at the club also got involved when their children took up cricket, and together they are helping to make the junior teams even more of a success, with a big push for people to become qualified coaches.

Philip added: “When my son got interested in cricket when he was nine or ten and was learning to play the game so I started helping with the juniors and got more and more involved.

“It is nice to give something back as I’ve had a lot of joy out of cricket over the years and it’s nice to help the young lads enjoy it too. It is good fun to see to see kids pick it up and there is a great satisfaction in seeing them progress from the junior teams through to the senior teams.”

To find out more about the club go to http://buxton.play-cricket.com (opens in a new window)

Bookmark with: (what's this?)