Ladies' awards wrap up successful season

On Friday, April 9 the ladies celebrated the end of season in style with a small gathering of 16 lovely ladies and one male coach in Surbiton. As you can imagine Goalie was in his element! Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed including shots for every single player for fines and positive reasons.

The highlight of the night was the Whetherspoons race. This involved each member of the team, being time, running, high heels and all, out of the bar down the road to Whetherspoons buying a jager bomb and sprinting back. Initially times were quite lame - about six minutes - but then it turned serious and the tactics started. Ana was our overall winner with a superb time of 1 minute 19 seconds, anyone would think it had been life or death.

There was a serious side to our night with words said from both Sarah and Goalie and a few Awards given out and were as below;

Players Player - Rosie Marriott

Most Improved - Emma Varley

Coach's Player - Jackie Waite

Most Goals - The retired Vikki Mottram

Also on a very sad note the ladies said goodbye to a brilliant player who has been with the club for 14 years and produced some outstanding hockey. Vikki Mottram aka Gadget you will be missed.

As a leaving gift, Gadget was given a little pressie, two mugs with her name, number and the OC crest on them (one for home and one for work) and a pink umpire shirt. Gadget quickly picked up on the hint and made it clear the shirt would be worn but not on the pitch as she refuses to umpire. In response to her gifts Gadget produced from her pocket an A4 sheet of paper and recited a poem which she had created and in honour of her here it is:

The season's over, time for me to go
But first I wanted to let all of you know
Playing for the OC's has been a ball
I want to thank you one and all.

Starting back in 96
We were still playing with banana shaped hockey sticks!
Mel was captain, Ladies OC founder too,
And in a moment of madness asked me to fill the captains shoe.
I wore the armband at all times with pride
But if I said the job was easy, I must have lied

Finding an umpire could be quite hard
And you never you knew if Martin would show you a card!
A few greens we've had a long the way
And I think a few yellows, well, what can you say!
We always play with the aim to win,
Even if it meant time spent in the sin bin
We've had cuts and bruises, bloody noses, black eyes too,
But we wear our OC shirts proudly - the orange and blue.

And a huge thank you to Hels, Jax and Manny too.
Captains past and present, we'd be lost without all of you.
You've built this team up to be a team to fear
and I have no doubt of you getting promoted next year.

And thank you our Coaches – hubby Dunx and Goalie too
Where would we be without both of you.
You always put up with our constant chat
But you had our full attention, I promise you that.
Even when we were discussing Strictly Come Dancing
You got us to listen at the fourth time of asking

To thank you all would take too long
And I'm sure you've had enough of me waffling on
So I'll stop now and please raise your glass
A toast to The OC Ladies – a team of pure class.