Brunswick Hockey Club gives back to the community to claim award
Brunswick Hockey Club has been crowned Victoria’s Community Club of the Year. And two initiatives run by the club’s youthful leaders helped them claim the award.
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Brunswick Hockey Club has been crowned Victoria’s Community Club of the Year.
The award, presented by Hockey Victoria, comes on the back of two initiatives and the club’s mantra to give back to the community.
Junior committee member Dean Paatsch, from Brunswick Hockey Club, said one of the driving forces behind the club’s success was promoting good behaviour in young people.
“We set up a group of 15 under-15s to teach them to umpire and coach and also leadership skills,” he said.
Mr Paatsch said the young leaders were tasked with establishing and running a program which would impact the community in a positive way.
They teamed with the North Melbourne Football Club program The Huddle to run an eight-week Hookin2Hockey course for children at the Flemington, Kensington and Ascot Vale community centres.
“At the end of that there were 66 kids who did the program and we invited them to the club afterwards,” Mr Paatsch said.
The another initiative involved introducing a group of Indian and Pakistani students from the CBD to team-based sport.
“A lot of those kids are isolated, a little bit out of sorts, have language issues or cultural issues, but hockey is the national sport of India, particualry in Punjab where a lot of these kids are coming from, and they played at school,” he said.
“What they don't have is a culture of club hockey so what we did was set up a program around social pick-up hockey for international students.”
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Hockey Victoria chief executive Andrew Skillern said the club had shown great leadership.
“Brunswick have been at the forefront of community engagement in 2019 and support Hockey Victoria in growing the great game of hockey within the state,” he said.