August 2015

Welcome to another Yellow Dot, choc-a-bloc full of information.

We’ve just finished another wonderfully fun and successful Club Championships, and seen many of our teams perform very well during the Autumn pennant. More details below.

Good luck to the players in the Spring pennant, which has just kicked off.

Contents

Save the date: 11 December!

It’s always a cracker of a night, with a visit from Santa and lots of other fabulous activities.

Keep an eye out for emails providing further details.

Progressive Dinner

The progressive (Mystery) dinner has become one of the social highlights of the Club calendar. The dinner sees 4 courses, at 4 different host venues, with 4 different groups of your clubmates. It will be run in September/October this year. As with previous years, this will be a FREE event, with partners welcome and a great way to meet your clubmates at a social level. Stay tuned for further detail.

Juniors

Dickson junior training began once again at the start of the new school term. Numbers are steady, fluctuating between 30 and 35. Our club is in a unique position whereby senior players continue to give outstanding service to our juniors by attending the coaching/training sessions and disseminating their knowledge and skills on to the willing attendees.

Composite club junior teams have been formed for the new junior spring pennant that began on 14 August. Dickson are represented by 17 players, the highest number of any of the participating clubs.

Dickson also provided several players at the “Go Troppo” fundraising tournament held on 2 August. Of these, Harry Burgess was presented with an encouragement award. GO HARRY!

2015 AGM

The Annual General Meeting was held on 8 August following the Club Championships. During the AGM, the awards noted in the following sections were presented; and the 2015-16 committee elected (see back page).

Bodyline Sports - Player of the Year

Every year, the Bodyline Sports Player of the Year award is presented to the player whose Matrix rating increased the most after playing in both pennant competitions for Dickson, and competed in at least 10 matches in each pennant. This year the winner was Oliver Palmer, who increased his matrix by a whopping 42 points matches across the two pennants. Congratulations Oliver!

Special mentions were given to the following players who also had significant increases: Riley Peebles, Jamie Clough, Luke Apelt, Brendan Cara, Jeremy Czoban, Terry Hannigan, Scott Reid, Ben Luckie, Harrison Barnett and Nathan Etheredge.

It’s interesting and wonderful to see that Brendon and Harrison received special mentions last year too – they’re going places!!

President’s Award

Every year, our President gives an award to the Club member who he or she thinks has made an outstanding contribution to the Club. This year the winner was Anthony Burgess, who has been a significant “cog in the wheel” of the DSC for many years. Anthony’s major achievement in 2014/15 was taking the club championships into the 21^st century, utilising the sporting software “Sporty HQ” to deal with the championship registration, payment, player communication and match scheduling. The success of the championships with this software will see the DSC looking to use this (and other new technologies) in its other activities.

Well done Burge.

2015 Club Champions

We held our annual Club Championships back on 1 (doubles) and 7-8 (singles) August. Here are the key results:

To see all the match results, jump on to https://www.sportyhq.com/tournament/view/2015-DICKSON-SQUASH-CLUB-CHAMPIONSHIP

Physio Thanks

A warm THANK YOU to physiotherapist Jamie Clough who brought his massage table to the Club Championships and offered free treatment throughout the singles event. He was a busy lad, coming 3^rd in C grade, doing his marking/refereeing duties, and fixing up 10 club-mates to ensure they could carry on in their events.

Jamie works for Sport and Spinal Physiotherapy (www.sportandspinalphysio.com.au) who have practices in the City and Gungahlin. If you need physio help, contact them on 6262 4464.

Premier – What’s in a Line?

The Autumn Competition saw a trial whereby Division 1 Premier teams were made up of the best possible players in the ACT (based on Matrix rankings), and was undertaken successfully and very well received.

The top 18 men and top 6 women were approached and distributed evenly across 6 non-club based teams. This meant Premier line 1 had the top 6 men, line 2 the next 6, line 3 the next 6, and line 4 had the top 6 women. They battled it out over 15 rounds to determine the top Team, and then played individually for the top of each line.

From Dickson, congratulations to Michelle Steele, who won the Premier Women’s Line with Jackie Oliver running up, and to Finian Kennedy who won Premier Men’s Line 2.

Dickson submitted 5 women and 6 men to the competition, the largest contingent from all clubs.

This highly competitive and enjoyable format is being repeated in the Spring Pennant Competition.

2015 Autumn Pennant

The Autumn 2015 pennant recently finished, with Dickson providing the following winners and finalists:

Spring Pennant

The Spring Pennant recently commenced. It will be played over 17 rounds, with Grand Finals in the week of 30 November.

Dickson submitted a total of 23 teams, which continues to be the largest number from any Club.

Good luck to all Teams! …and make sure our reputation for hospitality and good suppers is maintained whenever you are the home team!

Additionally Dickson again submitted the most individuals for the Premier Line Teams. The men and women from Dickson playing in the Premier division are:

• Finian Kennedy
• Hayden Ross
• Graham Mackay
• Peter Trevitt
• Dominic Ransan-Cooper
• Michelle Steele
• Jackie Oliver
• Lisa Matthews
• Emily Russell
• Toni Maxfield

Go get ’em!

Tuesday In House

The Tuesday night “In House comp” runs in parallel with the pennant. Its success speaks for itself, with all places for the new competition having been taken up before the old one had finished back in May.

It provides a very social occasion for all concerned. The teams are evenly balanced, ensuring that all players in the 8 x 4-person teams get a competitive match each time they play.

Bodyline Sports Comps

Mid-season singles and doubles finished in late July. As usual, both were well attended. The doubles boasted 36 teams split in to three divisions, and there were 12 x 4-player teams in the singles. Both competitions are also very social occasions, with the key to success being the mixed gender composition of the teams in both formats.

Dusk Till Dawn

The club will be waiting until the warmer months to host the 7^th annual running of the “Dusk till Dawn” event. Let’s face it, if you are playing squash from 9pm on Friday night to 7am on Saturday morning, you don’t want it to be -5 outside. Watch your emails.

Leland Barnett convalescing

After a major skiing accident in Queanstown NZ in July, we wish Leland Barnett all the best with his continued recovery in Christchurch, and a safe return home soon.

We all know NZ is a great place to visit, but you don’t really want to do it smashing up your chest and innards, being airlifted to hospital, having an operation to suffocate part of your spleen, doping out on a morphine drip, hitting on the doctor, letting your father infiltrate your Facebook account, etc etc.

SLOW DOWN next time Leland J

Welcome to Planet Earth

Congratulations to Dominic and Hetta Ransan-Cooper for the safe arrival of baby Sebastian. It was hard to miss the smile on proud dad’s face as he waltzed around the centre during the Club Champs, with sleeping Sebastian bouncing in a sling on his front J

Sunday Practice

Held every Sunday from 1-5pm at the minimal cost of $8.00.

Sunday Club Practice offers an ideal way to hone your skills with other players in the club. Just turn up and a co-ordinator matches up players to make sure everyone gets a good practice.

Play for 20 mins, or 4 hours: it’s up to you.

Invariably some doubles is also played, so if you and your partner need to practice your skills, this is the time and place.

Club members are rostered on to coordinate and oversee each session.

Check out the Club website (www.dicksonsquashclub.asn.au) for more information about Club Practice and the Volunteer Roster.

2015-16 Committee

The 2015-16 Committee was elected at the AGM – and it’s great to see Sian Owen-Jones as a new face:

President: Stephen Barnett

Vice President: Len Early

Secretary: Pam Price

Treasurer: Dick O’Rourke

General Members:

Leanna Davey
Paul Cartwright
Julie Polson
Doug Lean
Anthony Burgess
Madeleine Barnett
Dominic Ransan-Cooper
Hayden Ross
Karina Sommers
Sian Owen-Jones

Remember that you can contact anyone on the committee, at any time, if you have questions, suggestions or comments about any aspect of the Club’s operations.