Arsenal Hockey Club in Mackay to honour David Adrian and others at 70th birthday celebrations

A sporting club will use its milestone birthday to honour some of its past and founding members who have left a lasting impact on the Mackay competition.

A Mackay sports club is finally able to farewell some of its great past members at a historic birthday celebration.

Arsenal Hockey Club, which is celebrating 70 years of competition on October 30, will use its anniversary dinner to pay homage to club greats who had passed away since the last official celebration.

Arsenal player Antoinette Morton, who plays in the A2 Ladies competition, said it would be a “brilliant night of celebration”.

“Unfortunately we’ve lost some very special people from our club in the past two years, and during Covid we weren’t able to celebrate them the way we would’ve liked to,” she said.

“One of our founding members, David Adrian, passed in 2019, he started the Founders Medal which acknowledges a young person in our club.

“It’s a real passing of the torch.”

Mackay’s top hockey talent Claire Colwill, who has represented Queensland and Australia in various competitions, was the first recipient of the medal.

“Claire is absolutely burning the house down in the world of hockey,” Ms Morton said.

“She’s an exceptional young woman and hockey player, and really a great representation of our club.

“That’s the nice thing about this celebration, we get to pay homage to the people who started and ran this club to where we are now.”

Arsenal was able to maintain steady membership throughout Covid, and Ms Morton said it was because of the family values at the club.

“We’re a real family-driven club, so during Covid we tried to be there for our community as much as we could,” she said.

“We had ‘drivebys’ for people’s birthdays when we were allowed to, where club members would dress up their cars and drive past members’ houses to wish them a happy birthday.

“We’ve been able to maintain our numbers really well, and we’ve had a lot of people returning to the club after not playing for a period of time.

“Everyone at the club was there for each other during tough times.”