Image Credit: Kamloops Long Blades Club via Facebook

KAMLOOPS - David Reith from the Kamloops Long Blades Club was awarded the John Hurdis Outstanding Volunteer Award on June 18, 2016 in Ottawa.

From the moment that David’s son joined the KLB David started to volunteer.

At the club level David developed and ran the Kamloops Long Blades Club’s Learn to Skate and Speed Skate Program, coached all ages, developed a dryland warm up program, developed the club’s website and was a club board executive member for 11 years. He is a natural teacher and coach and very approachable, which has flowed into a role of educating families about the sport, equipment care and how they can contribute to their child’s progress and to the club. He sees a need, and develops a session or workshop to solve the need.

David consistently volunteered always helping with safety mats and equipment, arriving early to help set up competitions, assisting in the recording office to capture results as quickly as possible, initiating and attending fundraising efforts, taking photos, advocating for the sport and encouraging everyone to try speed skates.

David loves technology and used his skills and his meticulous attention to detail to develop the club’s web site and data base of the athletes’ results from competitions and practices.

The quality of David’s work with the KLB website and data base impressed BCSSA executive and he was soon recruited to be the primary person responsible for the development and maintenance of the BC Provincial Data Base starting in 2010. He has worked with BCSSA staff and database design company to make a system that can track and organize data accessible to every club in the province. It has been a huge responsibility that is a very demanding volunteer effort. David has entered results for every BC skater, long track & short track, at every competition in the province, nationally and internationally. The hours have been endless. Some weekends he was devoted to nothing but data verification and meticulous entry to ensure the results were accurate, timely and available. His eye for detail and thoroughness ensures the data is quality and free of errors and omissions.

David’s contribution to speed skating has been remarkable, however, even more remarkable has been his return to volunteering after a serious vehicle accident last summer which left him, and his wife, with multiple injuries. David was not supposed to volunteer for us this past season, after being injured he was to take it easy, but through his remarkable personal fortitude, determination, dedication and love of speed skating, he has made a return to his volunteer duties – he is helping the Kamloops Long Blades Club still, was in the recording office in Kamloops at the BC Short Track Championship in March. David has slowly returned to his volunteer data base volunteer work at the provincial level which took 3 people to do the work he did in past seasons. He is determined, and seemingly, unstoppable to fully return.

We are very happy to have this amazing person back to inspire us. KLB wishes to congratulate David on this National speed skating award.

News from © iNFOnews, 2016