West Coast Thunder Awards Day was held on Saturday 5th of December at Bathers Beach House in Fremantle. The event, combined with the 2021 information day provided an opportunity for sponsors, athletes, coaches, umpires, committee members, family and friends to celebrate the year that 2020 was and the success that each team saw across their 6 month pre-season to the Australian Championships which were postponed due to COVID-19. The awards began with each the Coach's award from each of the 6 touring teams and finishing with the presentation of the Club Person of the Year award - second in the association's history. Current and previous award winners can be found here.
Voting for the Club Person came from each team's leadership and coaching groups in a 3-2-1 format following the postponement of the Australian Championships in 2020. Voting was close, with the final result not being decided until the last few votes were counted.
Head Coach Lorraine Ward (pictured left) was named as the 2020 Club Person of the Year, narrowly edging out Association President Jerome Gillbard and Long-Term committee member Sheldon Burns (2019 recipient).
WCMMNA President Jerome Gillbard congratulated Ward and her commitment and professional addition to the Thunder state Men's & Mixed Program.
"Wardy is an absolutely deserving winner of this award, a long-term coach within our association, an avid promoter of the Men's & Mixed product and pathway and as someone that has taken the whole program to a whole new level of professionalism and successes along her journey.
We are extremely grateful to have Lorraine's wisdom, expertise and creativity driving our program forward and with each step we take we get closer to success as a WA Group - that mostly is due to the positive influence Lorraine has had on our program, culture and both team and individual successes across our journey. We look forward to another year with Wardy at our helm and hopefully numerous more to come."
Each coach was also able to present their Coach's award for the season, whilst with no games being played there was no MVP or players player awarded.
Official Awards Listing (Coach's award):
Men's Open: Daniel Cools
Men's Reserve: Mo Hosea
Mixed Open: Kristofah Charlie
Mixed Reserve: Emily Fuller
23&U: Connor Rawlings
17&U: Callum Grant
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