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Taupo Cricket’s Stu Martin receives Sports Waikato Service to Sport Award

Taupo Cricket Update

Taupo Cricket, was well represented at the recent Taupo Sports Awards evening in November 2017, which celebrated twelve months of sporting excellence in the Great Lake region.  

Stu Martin was presented with a Service to Sport Award for over 20 years of service to cricket. The award citation stated “As a player Stu had been a representative player at local, provincial and national level. He has coached for more than 16 years from junior to ND representative level. He has been instrumental in initiating a pathway for cricket players from Taupo juniors to Baywide premier cricket. Stu’s passion for cricket continues to inspire all around him from Board level through to junior players he manages and coaches”. 

Stu is the essence of the volunteer spirit that is drives the majority of sport in New Zealand. He is a current Bay of Plenty Cricket Board member, Taupo Cricket committee member, Taupo junior representative coach/manager, Lakeland selector and performs umpire duties when time allows.

Lake Taupo Cricket Club was a finalist in the Sport Waikato sponsored Club of the Year, with Marara Darlington-Paku from the Lake Taupo CC, nominated for the Administrator of the Year.  The Lake Taupo Cricket Club was formed in 2016 and in their first season fielded a team in Western Bay of Plenty Senior Reserve team (by invitation), a Rotorua Senior Reserve side and a local social team. 

After winning the WBOPCA Senior Reserve First Round competition and Championship, they earned promotion to the Baywide Premier competitions, in the 2017/18 season. 

Taupo Junior Cricket was also a finalist in the Club of the Year. With over 140 junior members, the club embraced modified formats in order to grow the junior game in the region. 
A motivated and pro-active committee was put in place to advance and promote the game of cricket in the Taupo region. 

Their major  achievement was to create a development group of Year 5 to 8 year old players, to play against other regional representative sides and also participate in the Riverbend Cricket tournament in Hawkes Bay each January.

In other cricket news in the Great Lake region, a hugely successful Festival of Cricket for Year 5 to Year 8 school players took place at Owen Delaney Park in November. Twenty-one teams took part with Mount View School fielding a remarkable eight teams. Other schools that took part were Hilltop and Waipahihi Schools along with Wairakei Primary. 

Mount View School won both the Year 5&6 and the Year 7&8 championships with Hilltop School finishing as the runner-up in both divisions