Since fire destroyed Sport Lotteries House in Mount Claremont back in 2014, SportWest has been working towards the vision of recreating a centralised location for sport to work from, meet and come together as one.
I am excited to announce that on Monday, the builders will take over 203 Underwood Avenue and transform it into Sports HQ, a new collaborative space for community sport administration. Sports HQ has gone from a dream to a concept and is now a reality.
The concept of housing a number of sports all in the one building helps to strengthen a sense of industry and will no doubt allow for sharing of resources, ideas and experiences, under a cost-effective model – all of which will benefit WA sport.
The versatility of the space will also allow for Members to book board rooms, meeting rooms and there will even be hot desking opportunities if you need a desk for a day, a week or a month.
This is an extremely exciting time for SportWest and our team are very much looking forward to having our own space and sharing it with our Members.
We anticipate that the refurbishment will take the rest of the year and as of 2022, SportWest, Rugby WA, the Western Force and a number of other sports will call Sports HQ home.
Over recent months we have been in discussion with a number of sports that will be the inaugural tenants at SportsHQ. Now we have finalised the plans and construction is underway, if there are any other sports that would like to discuss locating within Sports HQ please contact me.
What that does mean is that our team will be working remotely for the remainder of 2021 however, we can still all be contacted via email and phone during office hours.
I want to take this opportunity to thank our Members and staff from DLGSC for attending our Industry Sailing Day at Royal Perth Yacht Club.
We have had tremendous feedback from those that attended and even some feedback from people who missed out, communicating their devastation of missing such a fun day on and off the water!
We are currently developing a calendar of events for 2022 which will include similar opportunities to the sailing day as well as the Women of Sport events and bespoke opportunities with our partners and suppliers.
We can confirm that the first event for 2022 will be the SportWest Awards which will be held in late February.
We are very close to finalising the venue and date however, given the continued uncertainty around COVID-19 borders and restrictions, particularly capacity limits on hospitality, we are working on different plans to ensure the event will go ahead regardless of what COVID-19 throws at us.
Nominations for the awards are now open and we strongly encourage Members to get nominating.
It is exciting that at next year’s awards we will recognise the hard work of sports administrators with the inaugural DLGSC Sports Administrator of the Year Award.
We have seen over the last two years, in particular, sports administrators putting in a mountain of work and extra hours to ensure community sport happens each and every week.
They played a major role in helping volunteers navigate the changes that came with COVID-19 and it is their hard work which has enabled participation rates during the COVID recovery to increase across the State.
All the information you need to nominate is available via our Nomination Portal, nominations will close on 30 November at 5pm.
Matt Fulton
Chief Executive Officer
SportWest
