Spirit of Norton Awards

Roll of Honour

If there’s one thing for certain, it’s that sports clubs can’t run without volunteers and friendly faces! We’re very lucky to have so many people willing to get stuck in and make a difference for other club members, and in 2014 we introduced an award to recognise their contributions. Nominations for Spirit of Norton awards are welcome from any club members, so if you feel someone has done anything to make Norton Archers the best it can possibly be, from helping you get settled in at the club to taking on a major club development project, please let us know! J

Last Updated: 5th November 2016

Current Count: 16 awards presented to 17 awesome Nortonians!

Mark Chaffer
Mark was one of the major inspirations behind the Spirit of Norton awards and was presented with the very first trophy at the 2014 Christmas party, as you can tell from the festive jumpers in the photo! With his consistently positive attitude he is the epitome of a Norton Archer; always smiling, friendly and funny, which makes the club a great place to shoot. Not to mention, his hand is first in the air whenever there’s a job to be done, and even if he’s struggling at a competition (we all have days like that!), you can bet that he’ll stick out the shoot with a smile on his face – what a fantastic representative for the club!
Mike Hope
There’s no doubt that Mike’s a brilliant Publicity Officer but his contributions to the club by no means end there! He’s taken holidays from work to help with school coaching sessions, he’s designed a booklet of information for new members completely on his own initiative, he’s always taking photos of club events and makes them available quickly for uploading to the website, he volunteers on the club buddy scheme, he keeps the club noticeboard up to date… basically, if something needs doing, Mike will pick up on it before anyone else and get it sorted, no fuss!
Victoria Stephenson
Novelty shoots are no mean feat to stage but our members love them and they’re so important for the ‘family fun’ feel to the club. When we needed a volunteer, Victoria bravely dived in and took on the organisation of the club’s Unofficial Harry Potter novelty shoot in 2014, designing all of the targets and scoring systems, organising everyone into teams with chocolate treats and putting on an awesome afternoon. And even after all that work, she went ahead and did it all again for the Christmas novelty shoot, too!
Paul Stephenson
Paul’s award was quite a funny one because we keep the recipients a secret until the awards are presented… and he had actually made the wooden base for his own trophy! Whenever the club needs something like that making, Paul is there in an instant and the result is always lovely and amazingly quick. And he works in a great team with Victoria on the novelty shoots and to welcome novice archers and point them in the right direction with any questions they may have.
George McMillan
As a competitive compound archer, George provides great support for novice and junior compound archers at club sessions and gave very quick and thorough feedback on guidance documents for archers looking to get into competitions. As part of a small team, he put together an entire set of Danage foam bosses and stands in just a couple of days, ready for use in the first club session after their arrival, and he made distance markers for the outdoor season completely on his own initiative. You can always rely on George to just crack on and get stuff done!
Mike Arkwright
As the club expanded and more and more people started attending competitions and winning medals and trophies, we needed someone to let us all know how awesomely they were shooting. Mike was the perfect person, putting the results onto the club’s Twitter account live from presentation ceremonies every Sunday and quickly becoming known as ‘Mr Tweet’! He is also a regular contributor to the ‘Norton Archers Social’ Facebook group and has made a number of much valued suggestions for the development of the club.
David Blackburn
Dave is so modest that his award came as a bit of a surprise to him! But there’s no doubt that he deserves it; he’s always there at the start of club sessions to help set up the range and he even came along to the Teesside Championships and Tyne-Tees shoots that we hosted in 2013 and 2014 totally of his own accord to help with the moving of the targets and other field party duties during the lunchbreak, showing his unwavering commitment and great attitude to supporting the club and its events.
Paul Maddison
Paul is one of those brilliant people who just gets on with whatever needs to be done at the club; if there’s a problem he can fix, he’ll fix it, and if it’s something a bit bigger or more long-term then he’ll make supportive suggestions for how the club can be even better and how he can help in that plan. As just one example of his many contributions, when we hosted our first open competition in 2015, Paul created keyrings as mementos for all of the competitors – in different colours and with different designs according to each individual’s bowstyle (and with another design for the judges), they went down a treat!
Sharon Tideswell
Although there’s no doubt our first open competition went brilliantly under Sharon’s term as Tournament Organiser, for committee members their Spirit of Norton nomination needs to be unrelated to their committee position. But not only is Sharon great at arranging competitions, she has also provided lots of club members with advice on how to get into competitions and has then supported them on the day of the event, too (it can be daunting at first but a friendly face and comforting words when you arrive can really help!). She even gave one of her release aids to a junior from another club whose own malfunctioned during a competition; the modifications required meant Sharon wouldn’t be able to use it again herself but she wanted the junior to be able to finish the shoot. Spirit of Norton, indeed!
Philip Chaffer
Not only is he our amazing Treasurer, but Phil has a real interest in the history of archery… to the point where he started on plans to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt a full two years before the event! By the time of the shoot in July 2015, he had designed and created some truly fantastic – and historically informed – medieval targets, sourced all of the really unique trophies and encouraged the competitors to dress in period costume. He and his team pulled off the weekend with such great feedback that he immediately committed to running another historical shoot in 2016!
Doreen and Keith Thompson
Doreen and Keith joined the club in May 2015 and in no time at all they were well into the thick of things – only a week or two later they helped out all day at the Archery Big Weekend, keeping a record in quite chilly conditions of nearly 200 participants who had a go at archery that day! Before long, Keith was happily making targets for the summer’s Unofficial Harry Potter shoot and Doreen had established a valuable role in welcoming and chatting with our even newer members – particularly our juniors – to help them feel right at home. Suffice to say, it was an absolute no-brainer for the Thompsons to become our first joint recipients of a Spirit of Norton award: what a team!
Andy Flint
Andy has created loads of publicity material for the club over the years, from posters to flyers to giant banners we’ve had on display at have-a-go events (which look really cool!). At the time of writing he’s also helping to sort out a club flag for us to fly when we host competitions! And in 2014, he caught the field archery bug and he’s always keen to introduce others to this side of the sport; Andy has been instrumental in building a relationship with Stonebow Field Archers to allow our club members to take part in field archery experiences and competitions for a whole new take on archery!
Sarah Chalmers
Even before she joined the club, Sarah was always involved in things as a parent of junior club members. And when she finally succumbed to the draw of archery herself, she only got stuck in further! She helps out in almost everything going on at Norton, from making novelty targets to acting on the field party at competitions; a lot of hours go into these things, often at home, but they really add extra success to our activities – especially when they’re done with a smile like Sarah’s!
Clare Smith
Clare is always on hand to help out with anything you could possibly think of: competitions, have-a-go events, novelty shoots, supporting our archers at club sessions… the list goes on and on. (And she’s always up for a laugh, too!) To give a flavour of her commitment to the club, when a number of our members were representing the county in Driffield in October 2015, Clare travelled down to support the juniors on the first day of the competition and stayed overnight to continue to support our seniors on the second day. And, of course, she does a really fantastic corned beef pie – whenever we have a buffet she finds herself rather in demand!
Vicki Waller
When we raised money at our 2015 Christmas shoot to help a local archery club in need, Vicki didn’t let things stop there. She took it upon herself to organise a charity dress-down day at work and the contributions from herself and her colleagues added considerably to the figure we donated. A lovely gesture and more than deserving of a Spirit of Norton award!
Martin Fitzsimons
Over the years Martin has done a lot for the club, between organising novelty shoots, volunteering at events like the Archery Big Weekend and helping out members at club sessions. In summer 2016, when he opted out of taking part in a novelty shoot in order to assist another member and make sure they could get involved, we knew we had to get him his long-deserved award as quickly as possible and presented it at the Club Outdoor Championships the very next month!