Borough Administrator/Coach of the Year Awarded To
Jon Wright
Jon has been a member of Benfleet Cricket Club since he was a teenager, joining the club in 1971. He has played for the club at every level and captained up to the 1st team level when he took over the captaincy during a difficult time for the club and made sure everything was in order before he passed it on to the younger members of the club.
Over the years, Jon has held many administrative roles within the club, including assistant treasurer, treasurer and vice-chairman. Recently, Benfleet has been recognised as having one of the best, if not the best, youth policy in Essex. This is largely due to Jon who has taken on both administration and coaching with great enthusiasm. He is a level 2 coach who coaches both the youngsters and the aspiring club coaches. This takes place throughout the year. During the winter, he has run introductory cricket courses for local school children as well as overseeing the coaching of the youth players already affiliated to the club.
Jon is now overall Youth Manager and his role is to organise fixtures, arrange matches, organise umpires, scorers, tea persons and arrange the transport to and from matches. The matches may be morning, afternoon or evening. Jon is always there to help assist his managers, chat to parents, step in when managers are temporarily unavailable and collect and transport children to and from games. On top of this, his greatest pleasure is to watch the boys enjoying playing cricket.
In addition to being the Youth Manager, Jon has also worked long and hard to obtain all the information that was required for the club to obtain Clubmark and become an accredited club of the English Cricket Board. He has also revived the club tour, acted as Assistant Welfare Officer, been heavily involved in fund raising and negotiations for the new club lease. Jon’s skills have also been recognised by the District as he has been asked to help in organising and running District sides.
This summer, he took on another challenge called FUNdamentals which entailed approaching schools and inviting children between the age of 6 and 9 to come to the club and experience the fun side of cricket. Jon took this on single handed and it was another success for Benfleet Cricket Club.
Jon’s tireless work over recent years has seen the club go from strength to strength and many of his efforts have caused him to give up playing cricket himself to ensure that all of his work is bearing fruit.
Jon is a great guy to have around and the description above only covers some of the superlative work he does in the administration and coaching of cricket in the borough.