Junior Volunteer of the Year, Ashley, Helps Organise Bocce Come and Try Day

Ashley is a gifted SOSUNS athlete who has recently been selected to represent NSW for tennis at the National Special Olympic games being held in Adelaide in 2010.  Ashley also participates in Special Olympics soccer and bocce which he fits in around the TAFE business course he started this year.

Participating, however, is not enough for Ashley.  Immediately upon joining Special Olympics earlier this year, Ashley was clear that he wanted to contribute to Special Olympics by voluteering and helping other athletes.  Of course SOSUNS was delighted to have Ashley’s help and the tennis athletes at the Saturday Willoughby group have been very lucky to have his dedicated commitment to assisiting their coach every Saturday afternoon.

Ashley’s athletes have enjoyed his enthusiasm and fun methods of coaching so much that they inundated SOSUNS with nominations for him to win the 2009 Tony Barr Junior Volunteer of the Year Award.  Ashley was overwhelmed and very excited to discover he had in fact won the award.

What a great year for Ashley.  All of these achievements in such a short time with Special olympics!

But Ashley has not finished his work with helping Special Olympics athletes yet.  Ashley has so enjoyed playing Bocce with Northern Region that with the help of his Dad, Peter, he has decided to start a SOSUNS bocce group so that more athletes can have fun playing the game.

Peter and Ashley have done a lot of work organising a bocce come and try day at 1:30pm on September 20th at North Sydney Bowling Club.  Ashley says that bocce is a great game which can be played by athletes of all ages.  So come along for a free sausage sizzle and drink, followed by coaching and a game of bocce.  Ashley will be there, excited to meet you all and help with some great tips.  For more information, including RSVP details, please refer to the come-try-bocce-flier