SUNDAY’S Shoalhaven District presentation signaled the end of an era for junior cricketing legends Les and Shannon Ison.
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Their relationship with the Shoalhaven juniors goes back about 10 years, when their youngest son Adam was in his first season of cricket.
Les had originally served as Nowra Junior Cricket Club’s delegate for district meetings, before moving onto the vice president and eventually president’s role, which he had held for the last five seasons.
Shannon spent three years as the association’s treasurer until last season, but still collected all the records for the awards at Sunday’s presentation.
With Adam and their eldest son Brad now too old for junior cricket, Les said he felt the timing was right to step down from the role.
“Over the last 10 years I’ve seen a lot of changes and it will be sad to leave in many ways,” he said.
“But it will free up a bit of my time on Saturday mornings,” he quickly added.
Les said the main reason they became involved was for the kids’ sake, because without volunteers, there would be no association.
While the job certainly brought its challenges, the rewards were there as well.
“It’s a labour of love type of a job.
“You don’t get paid for it, but it’s time you give for the benefit of the game of cricket.
“For me, the best thing about it was seeing the satisfaction on the kids’ faces when they received their trophies at the presentations.”
While he is not sure who it will be yet, Les was confident there will be someone suitable to fill the president’s role for next season.
“They can be hard roles to fill sometimes, but someone always seems to step up to the plate after someone has done it for a while.”
Les said he wanted to thank the committee, as well as sponsors and volunteers for all their work behind the scenes, which always made their job a little bit easier.