Boots, bats, balls, racquets and stumps flood in recycling push for winter sports season

Sport Hawke's Bay's school development officer Sally McKenzie and commercial manager Ryan Hambleton with some of the first boots to arrive for the Bring Yer Boots campaign. Photo/Paul Taylor

Hawke's Bay's grassroots sporting benefactors are showing themselves to be a diverse lot with the array of items being donated in the annual Bring Yer Boots campaign being run by Hawke's Bay Today and Sport Hawke's Bay.

The "boots" now also include a cricket bat, stumps, a separate full set of cricket pads and other accessories, hockey sticks, shin pads, tennis, squash and badminton racquets, cycling gloves and a box of school shoes, which arrived from one school yesterday despite it still being school holidays.

Well over 100 pairs of football boots, along with other sports shoes, have already been donated in this year's campaign, the fourth held at the start of each winter season since 2014, aiming to recycle boots mainly too small for the feet of their original owners and to put a new kick in the heels of others who may be struggling to acquire the footwear needed to start realising their sporting dreams.

Napier Boys High School student Connor Leslie was among the latest donors, saying he heard about the boots campaign from his mum.

"She said it's the chance to help kids get some boots when it's tough for their families to provide them," he said after handing over the bag he took into Napier office of Hawke's Bay Today.

It contained two pairs of "like-new" rugby boots and a pair of athletics shoes.
"They've only done a season," the 13-year-old said.

One man said he had two or three pairs of training and running shoes that had been "lying around" in his wardrobe for a while and when he heard about the campaign he dug them out and dropped them off.

"No good just lying around," he said. "Someone will get some use out of them."