Hawthorn Clinches Large Club of the Year
The Hawthorn Bowling Club was crowned Large Club of the Year at the recent 2023 – 2024 Bowls SA Awards Night.
Hawthorn has developed a comprehensive strategic and business plan that reflects its mission to provide a premier club for the sport of lawn bowls while fostering friendships, personal growth and community wellbeing, aiming to ensure the vast majority of the club’s 450 members feel they are continuing to achieve in terms of bowling skills, fitness and personal growth.
The club has undertaken several key projects this year to improve their infrastructure, and has achieved success on the green with seven pennant premierships.
With all of this going on they increased their accredited officials by 15%, expanded social programs, supported local charities, demonstrated exceptional financial acumen, as well as achieving a 7.5% growth in their membership base.
Club president Teresa Hanel said it was special to win the award after such a big 12 months for the club, with success on the greens and countless members continuing to pitch in behind the scenes.
“It feels fantastic because we have just come off a magnificent year,” she said.
“To recognise all of our volunteers like this is just fantastic and it means we are able to keep moving forward.
“Having the success on the greens has been really important, but then we have a lot of other people as well that have wanted to improve the facilities, make sure our events are really up there and making sure our Night Hawks program is magnificent.
“Its about having more people come to the club and be part of the club.
“We ran a singles event and there was 16 people out there on the greens, but we had over 25 people volunteering behind the scenes to make sure that event happened.”
