Oh what a night...it was our end of the 2014/2015 Presentation night for the U8 and U11 team. It was the opportunity to show some of the things our teams had been up to during the season.

There was so many highlights to this season:
1. A team moving from 6 players to 24 during this year
2. We became International TV stars (well a brief glimpse at least) when our U8 team walked out as Mascots at the Newcastle Falcons vs Wasps game featured Live on BT Sport.
3. We began develop more Multi sport skills in our team through introducing Cricket skills into some of our sessions.
4. The team got kitted out in matching kit!
5. The number of coaches and parent volunteers for the team trippled during the season.
6. Last year with 6 players we often had to borrow players from other teams to be able to field a whole team...this year we are fielding 2-3 teams and lending other team's players to make their numbers up.
7. As a team we began to help the wider club through leveraging the parents different skill set, in finance, fundraising, business development...all of us working together to create a better club and put on more and better experiences for our children and develop Youth sport, camraderie, team work, respect and discipline through sport.
9. We got support from Blyth Valley council to get the right equipment and kit to realise this ambition for the team and Youth sport in Blyth.

And what progress this team has made during this season. I still remember the very first lesson of this season when Stu Smith gathered the kids around, held up a rugby ball and began with lesson 1...."This is a rugby ball!"

How far we have come as a team from this first lesson. We have had a season where we have come together as a team. We have really foused on our handling skills this year and the number of passes and flow to the game that these group of youngters now can do is nothing short of amazing. Despite it being the first season for many of our kids and despite them coming up against teams who had by the large already played together for 2-3 years already...despite this our team competed hard in every single fixture they played and walked away with their head held high on every single occasion.

After this kind of season it was so hard to pick out individual winners as the whole team are winners in every sense of the word.

But some winners had to be selected...we began with the Players Player trophy which was the Players the team voted for themselves as having an outstanding season:

Players Player 2014/2015 season:
Josef Pennington
Kyle Dixon
Oliver Hutchinson
John Maughn

We then moved on to the Coaches choices which was based on not only rugby skills but showing all the core values of Rugby: Team work, Enjoyment, Discipline and Respect. We then chose the Most Improved Player and the Player of the Year;

Most Improved Player:
U7: Ethan Cook
U8: James Smith
U9: Harvey Jackson

Player of the Year:
U7: Oliver Stephenson
U8: Felix Halsius
U9: Sean Phillipson

Blyth RFC Youth also presented the "Dennis Hedley Memorial Award 2015"...which I am very humbled and honoured to say that I was the receipient of this year for the development of the Mini section at our club.

After all the awards it was then time to let our hair down....with a fantastic night for the kids to play together and the parents to chat over an orange juice or two until midnight.

What a fantastic season! Now bring on our Summer training and here's to another fantastic year in our team!!!