Northern Lakes Juniors 2019 in Review
First time the club has fielded 3 grade teams since 2014, First stand alone U9’s team since 2015. Our U15’s team made the top 4 in their first season in the region wide U15 competition. Inaugural ‘Fight MND Round’ was held in June raising over $2100 for Neil Daniher’s Fight MND Foundation.
The biggest event at our club this year was our first annual ‘Fight MND’ round held on the 16th June. This day was held in honour of a former member of the club who lost her battle to MND in November 2017. The region wide Auskick Gala Day was also held at our ground to support this event. All of our grade players purchased & wore special ‘Sock it to MND’ socks during their games on this day, we also had a large raffle with first prize being 2 nights accommodation at the Mantra in Nelson Bay. We also had donation buckets going around all day. The best part of the day was the Ice Bucket Challenge where local AFL celebrities were ‘dunked’ as part of the day’s festivities.
Our presence in Representative Football this year was great considering the size of our club, especially from our U15 team who had 10 players, nearly half the squad, picked for the Central Coast Rep team. We also had 2 players selected for the U13 team (Noah Taggart & Deacon West), 1 player for the U12 team (Deacon West) and our first ever female player selected for Rep Football in the YG12 team (Zahli Taggart).
Award Winners
Club Best and Fairest
U15’s = Jackson West
U13’s = Noah Taggart
U9’s = Jaspah Tomkins
We had quite a few players reach milestone game awards this year:
50 Games = Fletcher McMaster
50 Games = Luke Bragg
50 Games = Arnatt Cantwell
50 Games = Hayden Titley
100 Games = Samuel Mudge
Junior Club Person of the Year = Deacon West
Deacon was always willing to help out wherever he could throughout the year and was often there to help setup and pack up after home games.
Senior Club Person of the Year = Lyndel McMaster
This was Lyndel’s first year as a committee member, Lyndel also volunteered to be one of the club’s ERC’s having a background as a Registered Nurse which at some games this year was quite a busy role with injuries. Lyndel was always willing to help out when she could whilst still working and running her own family.
Induction of Life Member = Rachel West
Rachel has been an integral part of our club since joining in 2012, most recently as our Treasurer since 2017. It is the behind the scenes work that Rachel does, especially with finances, that makes her a wonderful asset to our club.
We had 3 players receive awards at the AFLHCC Presentation Night, Dylan Jakes for U9, Deacon West for U13 & Zane Robards for U15.
Our club also received the honour of being named Club of the Year, the first time we have received this award in many many years.
The Doyalson/Wyee RSL Club once again came on board as our Major Sponsor for 2019.
We would also like to thank our Minor sponsors listed below:
McDonalds Lake Haven
Metro Cinemas Lake Haven
Charmhaven Quality Meats
San Remo Fresh Bake
In 2020 the Club will be known and branded as the Northern Giants. In the middle of 2018 the then committee of the Northern Lakes Power made the decision to try and re-establish the community program we had with Port Adelaide from the late 2000’s. After this was unsuccessful the club decided to complete a review on our identity & who we really were as a club. From this review, the decision was then made to approach the GWS Giants to discuss a potential future partnership, in which the Giants were very happy to come on board with.
Over the last 18 months there has been an enormous amount of work done by the committee to get the club to this point where we are today, name & logo changes, constitution & bank changes, uniform changes just to mention a few.
We look forward to 2020 as I’m sure it will be a Giant year.
