WELCOMING ADDRESS BY INCOMING PRESIDENT JESSE BOWLAND CURTIS
Thank you to the committee for choosing me as your President for the remainder of the 2014 season. It is a great and unexpected honour to lead our great Club. I hope I am able to demonstrate adequate leadership to do justice to the confidence you have in me.

Firstly I would like to thank the outgoing president Glenn Morley for all the hard work he has put into the club over the past six years. Glenn has worked hard to get our club in a great position for the future and I hope that together we can continue this path.

This season one of the main goals of the committee is to increase the number of Members and better Member engagement. We have already had great success this season increasing memberships:

• For the first time in a number of years we have our Modcrosse program back up and running;
  
• For the first time ever we have a full under 11’s team;
  
• We have a full under 13’s team;
  
• We have plenty of junior players for our C & D Grade divisions, which allows us to field two D Grade teams and one and a half C Grade teams; 
  
• We have also increased memberships in senior men’s and women’s teams.
  

Despite the great success in increasing numbers, we still need our members to be actively involved in the club. We are always looking for more members to take on more responsibility around the club and help with tasks that keep our club running. To name a few we require volunteers to assist with running the canteen and bar, coaching, umpiring, scoring, assisting as team managers and managing events. Remember, many hands make light work. If we can spread the work it will allow us to become more efficient and able to get more tasks completed throughout the season. If we are going to be successful in growing this great club we require everyone to help out at stages throughout the season.

The committee has, over the last six months, developed a number of goals for the club in order to improve and expand our great club. The three main areas of focus over the next few years will be:

• Continual development and recruitment in order to increase our junior/senior playing numbers;
  
• Continual improvement of training facilities including extending the current gym to create a better training environment for players and members; and
  
• Improving club demeanor including planning annual social activities for all members of the club and actively encouraging senior players and members of the club to become involved in the junior competition and training our juniors to become future State League/A grade players.
  

Development and Recruitment
The club has invested a large amount of funds into junior development this season already including a free stick program which has been very successful. We are planning to continue funding this program next year to continually encourage young players to find a team and get involved. We also hope that over the next year we will have more international players come to our club which will be beneficial in the recruitment of school children for the junior competition. Our focus will be on schools which we have ongoing relationships with and the successful recruitment of young players from. We are actively looking for international development officers/coaches to assist with recruitment. We are currently lucky enough to have Coady Adamson (Canada) at our club, and some other young players, assisting with the recruitment of junior players.

We have received interest from multiple other international players who have heard about our club and want to come over to play b and assist in the 2015 development and recruitment program. We are very excited to welcome these international players with college coaching experience.

Our aim for the 2015 season is to have at least 2 junior teams in each of the under 11, under 13, C Grade and D Grade divisions, and over 60 Modrcosse players.

Training Facilities
The Bayswater Lacrosse Club currently has the best facilities of any Lacrosse Club in WA. As memberships increase we will also have to ensure our facilities are adequate for our member’s needs.

We hope in the budget for the 2015 season, that we can have funds available to increase the size of our gym and improve the other training facilities at the club. This would be a joint project with the City of Bayswater, and we would hope a number of our members would seek to be involved in this project to better our facilities.

Club Morale
The social aspect of the club is also very important and needs attention this season and moving forward. We consider that it is imperative for our club and team strengthening that we have a social committee devoted to managing events for players and members and their families. We consider it essential that there is integration and team building between all members in order to eliminate any divisions that exist within the club. We are working on establishing a social committee for this season with the aim that it be fully up and running by next season with activities for the club as a whole, junior and senior members.  There is a wealth of knowledge between the senior players at the club and we are encouraging the senior players to work with the juniors to pass this knowledge on and help the juniors on their journey to become senior players. We are excited to begin to see this transition with some of our high school and under 18 players.

I look forward to your support and working with all members of the club including senior and junior members in order to grow our sport and make Bayswater Lacrosse Club the largest and most successful lacrosse club in the country.

Jesse Bowland Curtis

Under 18 National Championships 
A little less fortunate than the boys were the Girls Under 18 team, who lost a tough final to South Australia in Overtime by one -goal. This was the second overtime game between WA and SA in the tournament.

Bayswater were proudly represented in the team by Maddie Koelmeyer, and Janette Richardson (Manager)

Along with the Boys and girls team Bayswater well well represented in the officials stakes with Evan Walters, Sue Kirkby and Carole Bowland all part of the officiating team throughout the week