Willoughby Wildcats

We all knew it, but now its official...

Congratulations to Andrew Kitchen from the Willoughby Wildcats who is the 2011 NAB AFL Auskick Volunteer of the Year

Earlier in the year our Auskick guys / program won the Best Auskick program for firstly the North Shore and then for whole Sydney Harbour. This earnt Wildcats Auskick Co-ordinator Andrew Kitchen a trip to the AFL Gand Final.  That's him in the picture at the GF still wearing his Wildcats cap!

Following on from that, Andrew has now earned the title for all of Australia from a field of volunteers representing about 2,000 centres across the land. The announcement was made at the official NAB AFL Auskick Volunteer Brunch in Melbourne on Grand Final day.

As the overall winner of the NAB AFL Auskick Award, they have recognised that he has fostered a culture of family involvement in Auskick at the Willoughby Wildcats, which has encouraged parents and family members to get involved. Membership in Auskick has grown 20% over the past year.

Congratulated by Daniel Lecordier from NAB and Leigh Montagna from the St Kilda Football Club, Andrew will receive $5,000 in a NAB account and a spot on the trip of a lifetime, travelling through Europe with the 2012 AIS-AFL Academy Tour.

A well deserved win. Congratulations Andrew.

A great win by the North Sydney Swans - our JV U14 Div 1 team who beat Riverview in the Grand Final. An extremely close match which saw our boys win by a margin of only 4 points. 

The team has a strong bond of Wildcats and Mosman boys and a great representation of our JV with Mosman.

Congratulations boys!

Great effort but a narrow loss in the GF for our Wildcats U13 team. Congrats to Roger, Chris and Sara and the lads - who blooded 6 new AFL players this year to get the numbers up.

 It was a huge day on Sunday 31 July with about 8 Swannies taking time out at Gore Hill. Some stand-outs were Nick Malceski firing up U10 Malceski to come from behind to beat the Lewis inspired U10 Roberts-Thomson team, Daniel Hanberry out with U9 Jack team, the man himself prepping our U11 Goodes team, and all players floating through Auskick groups - what a buzz for our young guys & girls. Big thanks to Michael and everyone for making the day flow smoothly.

 With less than a year to go before they join the AFL competition, the GWS Giants is connecting with the local competition. On Tuesday 26 July two up and coming players (Gerald Ugle and Jarrod Harding) attended the training session of our U13 team. They ran a number of drills and gave the boys an insight into what it was like to be training and playing at the elite level and being coached by AFL legends Kevin Sheedy and Mark Williams.

Gerald heralds from a small town an hour out of Perth and has played the game all his life. He was picked up following a season with the Perth Demons. Jarrod on the other hand hails from Adelaide and really only got serious about footy when he was 16 after letting his primary love of basketball take a back seat.

It was a great night and all the boys now have posters of the GWS Giants squad to go with the orange GWS water bottles.