The Forbes Sportsperson of the Year Association (SOYA) are delighted with the quality of the nominations they have received for the 2015 Awards with the Annual Presentation Dinner to be held on Saturday 27th February at the Forbes Sport & Recreation Club commencing at 6.30pm.

The Forbes SOYA is a small yet hard working committee dedicated to recognising and celebrating the accomplishments of our local sports men and women as well as administrators and officials. Sport is an important part of life and the awards are an opportunity to pay tribute to the athletes
who excel in their chosen sport and thank and show appreciation to the many volunteers who give their time to ensure that children and adults of all ages have access to some of the best sporting facilities and competitions in New South Wales.

The awards being contested include the Junior and Senior Sportsperson, All
Rounder, Coach/Trainer, Referee/Umpire/Official, Administrator, Team and of course the Forbes Sportsperson and Runner Up for 2015. The overall winner of the Central West Credit Union Monthly Achievers Award will also be announced on the night along with the President’s Award, Phillip Adams Encouragement Award, Merit Awards, School & Special Sports Awards.

The calibre of the nominations received for all the awards was of a very high standard making the job of the independent judging panel extremely difficult.

The SOYA Awards would not be possible without the generous support of our local businesses, allowing Forbes to be one of the last country towns in New South Wales who host a separate sporting awards ceremony. Congratulations to all nominees and the SOYA committee look forward to seeing you, your families and the nominated sporting organisations join us when the 2015
winners are announced.

Forbes Triathlon committee members Nick Field and Nick Turner say online registrations have been double that of this time last year, in the lead up to this Sunday’s event.

Limited registrations may be taken on the day if capacity is not reached before then, but Field said it looks likely this year’s triathlon, the second to be held in Forbes, will be the biggest yet. The race will include swimming, cycling and running, but different distances have been included in this year’s event.

There will be Olympic, sprint and enticer distances, with Olympic being the professional standard distance, while sprint and enticer distances will be much shorter. The Olympic distances for swimming, cycling and running will be 1500 metres, two laps of 20km, and two laps of 5km respectively.

There will also be a division for children under 10 years of age with much shorter distances. Each event will start and finish at Lake Forbes on Bedgerabong Road. Turner said having three different race lengths for each discipline was good for enticing the whole community to get involved.

“Every event has different lengths, but we’re just trying to cater for everybody,” he said. “The Olympic distances seem to have attracted a crew from afar, and we’ve got some really good athletes from Bathurst,
Orange and Dubbo that have already registered online.” “The shorter ones are about trying to get a fit for the local people to get them involved, and hopefully the distances aren’t too strenuous for them.”

Turner said while the flat terrain in Forbes made it an attractive event for professional athletes to break personal best results, the event was more for locals to get a feel for how triathlons work. “What we want to do is provide an opportunity for people in the area to do a triathlon and see how it all evolves.

If it keeps growing like the way it is, maybe we can do something larger down the track and have a real marquee event,” he said. Turner expected there to be a great spectacle for spectators on Sunday as well, with athletes such as last year’s women’s winner Caroline Wolfson from Orange, Tyse Hurst from Dubbo and Nick North from Bathurst set to race.

“A lot of good athletes have elected to come here this weekend instead of Huskisson [large South Coast triathlon], so word has obviously got around that this was a well-run event last year,” he said. Spectating will be free of charge, and cyclists are being asked to be mindful there will still be other traffic on Bedgereabong Road.

The Forbes Basketball Association will rise from the ashes this year and restart competition after 15 years in the wilderness. The re-establishment of the association has been nine months in the making, after a number of now current committee members came together with their children wanting to play basketball.

Officials from Basketball NSW attended a meeting with them last year and gave them recognition, and competition is expected to start in the coming weeks. A registration day was held last Saturday where around 40 people registered, and it is hoped the same number will register again this Saturday.

Games will be held at the South Circle sports fields basketball courts and age divisions will be 10 years and under, under 12s, under 14s, under 16s and under 18s. At this stage divisions will depend on player numbers, and there will only be junior teams.

Association committee member Gavin Montgomery said competition would run during school terms throughout the year. “We’re going to run a three on three [players on court] competition in the first term before we move to full teams [five on five] in the winter competition in terms two and three,” Montgomery said.

The association has received various grants to help kick-start competition, and will spend funding from Member for Orange Andrew Gee’s office to build lights at the basketball courts, enabling night competition.

Forbes Diggers Swimming Club president David Sly said Tuesday’s Australia Day races were the best attended in the club’s history. Hot and sunny conditions on the day attracted 76 competitors of all ages across the junior, senior, Tom Drane Memorial, and scratch divisions.

Even Forbes Australia Day Ambassador Tracy Mann took a dip, despite still recovering from her frozen shoulder condition. Mann’s husband Scott Hartford-Davis, a seasoned long distance swimmer, also participated, while Forbes Shire Council mayor Phyllis Miller was on deck to support the event.

Sly said the event has grown every year, and he expects this to keep happening in the future. “We had great weather for the event, and this year has been the biggest we’ve had so far,” he said.

“We had great assistance from everyone who helped put the event together, including the Forbes Shire Council, and I’d like to thank them for what they did as well.” Mann said although she has never been a strong swimmer, she thoroughly enjoyed time in the water on Tuesday. “The water was just gorgeous,” she said. “I’m still recovering from frozen shoulder, so I could only do breaststroke, but I was really happy to do it just to be involved.” “I raced with the kids, but they gave me a head start. I needed it, but they still beat me.”

The main event was the Tom Drane Memorial Trophy, commemorating the founder of the Diggers Swimming Club.
This was won by Brendan Hayes, who swam a total of 80 metres in 23 seconds. Siobhan O’Malley took out the junior 50 metre, while Georgia Haggarty won the junior 30 metre. In the seniors, Scott Mattiske won the 50 metre race, while the 30 metre was a three way dead heat.

Scratch division winners Ellie Mattiske, Tom Mattiske, Darci Morrison and Joe Maitland. The Diggers Swimming Club run events for all ages with handicaps, in line with the ANZAC soldiers who returned home after WWI and recovered from their injuries in the swimming pool, with a wide range of capabilities. The club’s next event is the Western Region AIF Carnival on February 15.