Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc.

Kathy Cosham

Kathy Cosham is a Life Member of the Waverley Little Athletics Centre. She was involved at the Centre for 12 years and is one of the longest serving volunteers in our history. Kathy is one of three Life Members that has not served on the Committee.

The Cosham family joined the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc. during the 2004/05 season, with two eldest children Jeremy and Susannah in the U9 and U6 age groups. Kathy's children were home schooled and she initially decided to register them at the Centre to fulfil their physical education requirements. Kathy often looked after her two youngest childrenpaid the $50 duty levy for the first season, so she was not obliged to do duty. She decided to watch and learn more about the Centre and 

Over the past 10 years, Kathy has been one of our many tireless “behind the scenes” volunteers at Centre Level, in particular, as a vital part of our Results Input team. The core responsibilities of the Results Input Team were to input all of the handwritten paper results data. She has never been on the Committee; however her significant contribution to the Centre’s Results Input system has seen Kathy absorb most of the responsibilities, eventually taking over as Results Input Manager. 

On competition days, Kathy has enjoyed watching all four of her children participate at Little Athletics, before her work begins, but she will always help us out when needed. In particular, Kathy will help set up and pack up the tables and chairs in front of the clubroom, set up and manage the lost property table, manage the Duty Coordinator table and hand out bibs when required, sell raffle tickets for Centre fundraisers and assemble age group baskets. 

Results Input Team Member
In 2005/06, Kathy volunteered as a member of the Results Input Team, for the U6, U7 and U8 age groups. This position she continued for the 2006/07 season, which involved the sorting of recording sheets at the conclusion of the days program and taking them home to type the data into the computer. In 2007/08, Kathy continued as part of the Team responsible for the U9 and U10 age groups. 

Kathy took over as Results Input Coordinator in 2008/09, managing a small team of helpers until the end of 2010/11 when the Centre abolished the Result Input Team and result sticker sorters. This role was made easier with the introduction of the barcode scanning of laned track results in 2008/09, which meant only field event results had to be typed into the system. 

Mark and Kathy managed the excel spread sheets and input the results on the day for the 2008/10 Waverley Games Days. 

For the 2011/12 season, Kathy took over all of the Result Input responsibilities. She would spend Saturday afternoon and some Sundays entering all of the field event and long distance results data, ensuring that results were input by Sunday night. (I – Dylan – covered for Kathy for 4 weeks whilst on holidays; it was a very onerous task indeed!)

Further advancements to the system made by Kathy’s husband, Website and Results Manager Mark Cosham, has seen the processed streamlined for the Centre’s Results Input. The workload has shrunk over the years from:

• 2004/08 – 5 to 6 person team (one week to input results)
• 2008/11 – 3 to 4 person team (one week to input results)
• 2011/15 – 1 to 2 person team (one to three days to input results)

With the new Results database that Mark Cosham has written, results input now only takes 1-4 hours with Mark exporting and uploading all laned track events into the system and Kathy typing in all field event and long distance results. 

Waverley Open Day
Kathy has been a Key Official at our Open Day since 2008/09 as a Results Input Team Member. On the day (2008/11) the results input team worked off a single excel spread sheet, inside the Committee room which exceeded temperatures of 40+ degrees. Kathy and the team worked through the heat to ensure that results were put into the system straight away and published on the notice boards and finals sheets sent out to the Marshalling areas so the program wasn’t held up. When the Centre re-introduced the Open Day in 2013, after the track was re-seeded, the Results Input team “moved house” into the much cooler announcer’s booth, which allowed Kathy and the team to watch the action of the Open Day while working. Using the new custom built Results System for two seasons now, written by Mark Cosham, Results Input is a 2 person job, simply entering the data and printing the results and finals sheets. 

All of the Results Inputting is and has been done in Kathy’s own time, at home, once the Centre competitions have finished. She has been an instrumental Results Input member, spending countless hours and days inputting athlete’s results, ensuring they were in the system in enough time for results to be published in the local newspaper, the printing of athletes result stickers and publishing results on the website. Kathy has had no involvement at Region, State or National Level as her children do not participate at those levels. All of her volunteering is done at Waverley. 

In 2014/15, Kathy, who has given 10 years of selfless commitment and outstanding service to the Centre, received Life Membership to the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc.

Honour Board

• 2014/15 - Life Member

Centre Involvement

• 2005/07 - Results Input (U6/U7/U8)
• 2007/08 - Results Input (U9/U10)
• 2008/11 - Results Input - Waverley Open Day Key Official
• 2008/12 - Results Input Coordinator
• 2011/12 - Representative - LAVic Gala Award Dinner - Sandown
• 2012/17 - Results Input Manager
• 2013/15 - Results Input/Computer Operator - Waverley Open Day Key Official