Update for County committee meeting

Here’s the short development report I presented at last night’s county committee meeting.

 

North Midlands Development Officer Update Feb 24th 2014

Prepared by Scott Crowther.

 

County development meeting: March 3rd.

A development meeting open to all clubs and individual bowlers from the North Midlands has been arranged for Monday 3rd March, 7.30pm at Bedworth Ex-Servicemen’s Club, Rye Piece Ringway, Bedworth, Warwickshire CV12 8JH. The meeting will be run by myself with help from Ian McLean from CSW Sport (www.cswsport.org.uk) and will outline plans for 2014 in coaching, recruitment ideas, Clubmark and more.

Coaching workshop: April 6th.

A BCGBA Level 1 coaches training workshop has been organised for Sunday 6th April (venue and time TBC). It will be delivered by the regional coach, Bob Marsh. Spaces cost £10 and are available for between 4 and 8 people (3 already signed up). Two attendees at previous Level 1 coaching workshops (Scott Crowther and John Hatzer) will be assessed for their Level 1 accreditation on the same date. If successful, these will be the first BCGBA accredited coaches in the county.

National Development Meeting: March 22nd.

I will be attending a meeting of all the BCGBA development officers on March 22nd in Northwich. I am happy to raise questions on behalf of the county, if anyone wants to submit questions to me.

Equipment

I have now received honorariums from the BCGBA for my work as a development officer. I plan to invest all of this into the county development together with the remainder of the budget provided by the North Midlands county committee last year. It is not yet decided what to spend the budget on, but the plan is to use some for bowls equipment that can be used by any club at public facing Open Days.

North Midlands development 2014

it’s time to attack 2014!

So I’ve arranged a North Midlands development meeting at Bedworth Ex Serviceman’s club from 7.30pm on Monday 3rd March.
Address is: Rye Piece Ringway, Bedworth, Warwickshire CV12 8JH
Ian McLean from CSW Sport (www.cswsport.org.uk) will also be along to explain what they do.
The meeting will go through development plans for 2014, and to collect feedback, input and ideas.
It is open to all clubs and any individual bowlers who are interested in attracting new players, coaching or funding.

The current agenda is as follows:

– introductions
– recruitment success case study (Glossop Bowling Club)
– club and public open days
– marketing and promotion
– junior development
– coaching
– Clubmark
– funding options
– AOB.

I hope you’ll find this of interest.
We won’t cover everything in one meeting, but from this initial meeting, hopefully we can forge some good plans and relationships to increase crown green bowls involvement in our county.

Onwards and upwards.

Development review of 2013

Here is a copy of the development report I submitted for the North Midlands county AGM held in January 2014. I was unable to attend this meeting, so provided the below which was read out at the meeting.

Development Officer report for 2013.
Prepared by Scott Crowther

Firstly my apologies for being unable to attend the AGM today.

From my perspective, the 2013 season was relatively successful. I found out a lot from other counties about what might work for our clubs, and I started to build various relationships to help us. On the other hand we lost around another 100 registered bowlers this season. I am determined to try and reverse this over the next few years.

To summarise 2013 activities, one Level 1 BCGBA coaching course was run with 4 existing bowlers attending. The Coventry Telegraph began to publish a few updates about our sport. We trialled 4 ‘taster sessions’ in Memorial Park, successfully introducing around 80 people to the game for the first time. And I built a relationship with CSW Sport, the local sports partnership, who ran a Clubmark introduction seminar and public bowls events in Bedworth and Coventry City Centre.

2014 will be about starting to apply this knowledge. Current plans include monthly public taster sessions in Memorial Park, encouraging all clubs to run regular ‘Open Days’, and using the Internet and Social Media to promote these. In addition I plan to buy additional equipment for clubs to use for taster sessions (particularly for youngsters), run further sessions to turn bowlers into coaches, and try to establish regular reporting in the press. Finally, I will help where I can with new initiatives such as starting a Junior league proposed by Roly Clegg at Colliery, and helping identify funding.

But it will work best if we all get involved. If you want to grow your club over the coming years, I need your help.
I particularly need someone to work alongside me, leading on the coaching side of things.
I need clubs who are willing to run regular Open Days and try new things.
And I need plenty of individuals to volunteer to help at public events and provide other skills such as flyer design or writing news articles.
My thanks go to those who got involved in 2013, particularly Dave Chapman and his family, and Standard Club for their assistance at the public events.

I am organising a development meeting for the evening of Monday 3rd March (venue is TBC), to share and discuss more details on development plans. But don’t wait until then, if you have ideas or want to get involved, please get in touch with me on 07886 672087 orscott@thecrowthers.co.uk.

Thanks for listening.
Onwards and upwards!

Scott