Reeves Rangers Cathy Mason has picked up a Berkshire Football Awards nomination in the STAR Volunteer of the Season category.
We’ll get straight into it as the nomination is a lengthy and good one!
The nomination we received said: “For more than five years, Cathy has been the club secretary at the Wokingham based Youth Football Club – Reeves Rangers FC – and has carried out all of the extensive club secretarial duties that are associated with a Charter Standard club with great diligence and professionalism. In isolation, this in itself would undoubtedly merit Cathy’s nomination as one of the ‘Volunteers of the Season’. However, in reality this is only the tip of the iceberg and just one of the reasons why I and many others believe she should be seriously considered for this year’s award. In addition to her normal club secretary duties for Reeves, Cathy has also carried out the following during the past 12 months: – Has masterminded the club’s newly launched ‘Wildcats’ programme for girls aged 5-11 in Wokingham, which has proved to be a huge success and seen upwards of 35 girls experiencing the beautiful game for the first time. Was a key member of the small team that worked closely with Wokingham Borough Council and secured funding support from the Football Foundation to build the new 3G pitch at Cantley Park – a facility that has been enthusiastically used by huge numbers of local footballers this season. In addition to Cathy’s secretarial duties for Reeves, she also manages the weekly booking and co-ordination of pitches and referees on behalf of all of the club’s managers. Often a thankless task and a job that she has been doing even longer than her secretarial role!
“Cathy is also the true heartbeat of the Club’s annual end-of-season presentation day. This is the club’s major fund raising initiative of the year and is run as a ‘Family Fun Day’ for all of the clubs’ players and their families, across all of the age groups. Cathy plans, organises and runs the entire day – a huge undertaking in its own right. There are also other events that she organises e.g. the club’s involvement in the Wokingham Winter Carnival. As if her Reeves tasks weren’t extensive enough, this year she has also supported her son and his friends to form a brand new adult’s team. ‘Wokingham Wanderers’ are just completing their first successful season in the Bracknell Sunday League, where they have reached the league’s cup final to be played on 8th May. Cathy has used her knowledge and experience to great effect, carrying out all of the financial and administration tasks on behalf of the team, thereby ensuring that a group of lads – many of them who played together at school and in youth football – are once again playing football on a regular basis. I have no doubt that without Cathy’s guiding hand, the team would not have got off of the ground. I hope that she won’t mind me mentioning this but the fact that Cathy undertakes all of these tasks with incredible passion and enthusiasm, whilst also being a single Mum and dealing with the daily effects of a debilitating illness, I believe makes her achievements and contribution to the local football scene all the more remarkable. In short, I believe that Cathy Mason would be a hugely deserving winner of your ‘Volunteer of the Season’ category.”
Do you think Cathy’s is a worthy winner, or have you got other volunteers to tell us about? Scroll down to fill out the nomination form for the STAR Volunteer of the Season award.
Berkshire Football Awards news
Nominations open for:
- Match Day Experience
- Supporter of the Season
- Volunteer of the Season
- Best Image
- Save of the Season
- Goal of the Season
- Best Website or Blog
- Best Content Creator
- Best Community Campaign or Content
- Correspondent of the Season
- Physio of the Season
- Manager of the Season (Women’s Game)
- Manager of the Season (Men’s Game)
- Referee of the Season
- Young Player of the Season (Female)
- Young Player of the Season (Male)
- Player of the Season (Female)
- Player of the Season (Male)
- The Darrell Freeland Award for Service to the Local Game
Yes! The awards are taking place at the marvellous Double-Barrelled Brewery in Reading and we’ll have food available. Tickets will be limited but on sale from 29th May. If you’d like to know when so you don’t miss out, make sure you’ve signed up to our email newsletter here.
Scroll down to the bottom of this article for the nomination form. Before you do that though, here’s what the judging panel are looking for when choosing the shortlist.
What’s the story? Tell us exactly why the person or place should be considered. We hate to get all ‘X Factor journey’ on you but the more detail you can include, the better we can argue for your nominee for the short list.
The sort of details we love to see include things like player awards, goals, clean sheets and any other significant contributions to the footballing community – obviously within the 2023/24 season.
We’ll publish all the nominees for the Berkshire Football Awards as we receive them.
You can view all the 2024 nominees so far here.
Want to know who’s previously won what at the Berkshire Football Awards? There’s a big long page with all the previous winners here.
Nominations will be open until midday on Monday 27th May 2024.
The Long List will be published on Wednesday 29th May and the Short List on Friday 31st May.
Once nomination window has closed, the nominations in each category will be put before a panel of judges for a decision, the top four announced online and the winners at the awards night on Wednesday 19th June.
We will accept nominations for people out of area, the only prerequisite is that the reason for nomination is that it must be because of an affiliation with a club we cover on Football in Berkshire (a full list is at the bottom of this page). We will present certificates and a trophy to the winners.
- You can nominate as many people as you like for each award
- Please try and avoid nominating your own family members.
- Due to difficulties in obtaining permissions under child protection laws we won’t consider any player under the age of 16 for nomination in any of the categories
Nomination Form
Nominations for the 2024 Berkshire Football Awards are now closed!
What’s next? Look out for the Long List of all the nominations which will be published here and across all our channels by midday on Wednesday 29th May 2024.
The Short List for each category will then be published at 2pm on Friday 31st May 2024. At that point, tickets will be made available to attend the awards night at Double-Barrelled Brewery in Reading on the evening of Wednesday 19th June 2024. If you’d like notification of when tickets are available, sign up to our newsletter here.
Berkshire Football Award Sponsors
One Response
An absolutely deserving nomination for Cathy Mason who is part of the beating heart of Reeves Rangers (and has for been some time!) helping to ensure that pitches are always booked, funds are always raised and hundreds of kids get access to the beautiful game on a weekly basis.