Volunteer Sports Awards: Catching up with a 2019 winner during lockdown

Heather and her team!

Each year liveArgyll and sportscotland hold the volunteer sport awards. Local groups and clubs across the entire of Argyll and Bute nominate their volunteers who have made a substantial commitment and impact in their sports and for their community.

The 2020 award nominations are open so we took the opportunity to revisit some of last year’s winners and to catch up with what they have been up to during the COVID pandemic for their clubs and communities.

You can nominate your sports club volunteers for the 2020 awards here!

Heather Ferguson, Bute Ladies Shinty

Young Coach 2019 winner

Heather Ferguson founded the Bute Ladies Shinty Club. Two years on from what started as a facebook post to play Shinty in park is now two competitive ladies teams with members from 15 years old to 50 years old. On top of coaching the women’s teams, Heather coaches at schools and her teammates cite how she has acted as a role model to younger girls, helped improve confidence of her players and provided purpose for the ladies in this team.

During lockdown Heather has been involved with Bute Shinty Club to coordinate and deliver food parcels to her community on the Isle of Bute using the club mini bus.

On top of this she has kept her team together and helped inspire them to stay active organising a charity event to walk/run 1000miles as a team during May raising money for their local hospital. A huge congratulations to the Ladies Shinty team for raising £1,415 and covering 1569 miles in May.

“It was amazing to receive the Award! I was so happy! Shinty is one of my favorite things to do. I didn’t realise how much time I put into it until I got the award and spoke to the girls about it.

Training had been the same all year, the ladies started playing league games in March and the girls started competing in school tournaments over in Dunoon and on Bute. They have really enjoyed getting to play proper games!

Due to Covid we couldn’t train together anymore so we have had wee challenges on Facebook each week. We also got involved together by doing 1,000 miles to raise money for the Local hospital and some of the girls were also out delivering parcels to the people in the community so that was amazing!”