Insight: Sport is a volunteer's game

A Hawke's Bay Orienteering club member Steve Amron. Photo / File

As the weather front closes in, Steve Amron trudges across Romano's Park scanning the landscape.

A Hawke's Bay Orienteering club member, Amron has been drawing and constructing maps voluntarily for the past 10 years and for him, volunteers were essential for sport in the region.

"Sport runs on volunteerism," he said.

"Even the so-called professional sports, a lot of people are doing things for nothing regardless of whether other people are being paid. You couldn't do it otherwise."

Amron said the same could be said for school sports co-ordinators, a position he held at Havelock North High School for 11 years.

"I used to say that I was paid for 20 hours and I was done with that by Tuesday night and I worked the rest of the week for nothing. That was the nature of the job for all school sports co-ordinators."

He said he was worried about a growing trend of people not joining clubs, which left sports like orienteering scratching for numbers.

"They're treating it like a day skiing or a bungee jump where you go along, you pay your money and you go home and someone else is providing it. Most sports can't run with that kind of perception."

Sport Hawke's Bay marketing and communications adviser Laura Nagel said sport wouldn't exist in the region if it weren't for volunteers.

"None of these people are doing it to receive anything, they are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts so I feel like that is where you are building stronger communities."

Nagel said sport volunteers didn't stop at coaches but ranged from parents and people on the sideline to administrators that dealt with all the paperwork.

She said it was important to be aware of the future of sport in Hawke's Bay.

"For us, it's about building capability within the community, making sure that if one person left, there's someone else to take their place," she said.

"Then they have the capability to grow and develop sport and create those positive sporting experiences."