More than four decades ago, Lyn Shepherd began volunteering for Mountain District Netball Association (MDNA) in Ferntree Gully, and today looks after the role of secretary, coaches representative teams, runs a Fast5 competition as well as working 2-3 days as a teacher.
Shepherd’s dedication to her volunteer work and development of community sports saw her recently awarded City of Knox’s Volunteer of the Year where Shepherd said that volunteering and giving back to the community is simply something that has brought so much enjoyment.
Around 25 years ago, Shepherd began her role as secretary at MDNA with a focus on implementing policies and processes that were lacking within the association.
Within this role, Shepherd oversees all the admin work, convenes the Saturday competition (which has over 200 teams) and ensures that everyone is effectively doing their part within the association.
Whilst in this role, Shepherd also underwent her teacher training as a mature age student, which gave her great insight into governments and the right way to do things. She also found teaching and coaching to really complement one another.
“Over the years as an association, we’ve had a great rapport with Netball Victoria,” said Shepherd.
“We were the first association to run a NetSetGO pilot program and we have always tried to keep up with these new initiatives, which is something I firmly believe in.
“This was echoed by Netball Victoria CEO Rosie King when she shared at a workshop, ‘If you don’t have something that your clients want, you should provide it.’”
The association received a grant of $5780 through the City of Knox, which allowed them to purchase a Smart TV and sound system for the netball community to use.
“The focus of the grant was for community use of the TV and sound system for education and training as well as running workshops and using the system for presentation days.”
With four children and nine grandchildren, Shepherd’s big family is also involved in netball where one daughter takes our Net4Kids program, another coaching in the Casey competition as well as three grandchildren playing netball.
Shepherd will retire from teaching at the end of this year but sees herself continuing to be heavily involved in MDNA with a desire to volunteer as a teacher for kids in hospitals.
“I get a lot back from volunteering, I have met a lot of amazing people as well as developing a really great network of friends.”
