By Dale Budge
The Karaka Cricket Club are setting the standard in Counties Manukau Cricket off the pitch with progressive thinking and new-age philosophies that are drawing people to the club.
Their use of social media – both quality and quantity – and number of organised club activities is well ahead of any other club in the region.
The club was founded back in 1984 and been a major player in Counties Manukau ever since but a shift in philosophy about 10 years ago has taken the club to new levels never seen in club cricket before.
“We have fantastic foundations, set by those founding guys back in 1984 and they are still around and involved in the club, on the boundaries today,” club president Michael Schofield told Counties Sports Hub.
“There was a big push about 10 years ago to bring some the senior players on the committee.
“In doing that we got a few of the players’ girlfriends involved and then that brought other people into the club.
“We have some well-connected community members – George Glover is teacher at the local school so he has been amazing with our junior numbers. Junior club captain Andrew Napier is a local police officer so he too has a lot of involvement in the local community.”
Another one of those people was Caitlin Beattie, who has got involved in the club in recent times. Beattie boasts a wealth of social media and marketing experience and has transformed the club’s social media presence.
“People don’t go to websites anymore – it is all through social media,” Beattie said. “So you have to pitch what you’re doing the right way and utilise social media appropriately.”
Each week there are social media posts, announcing teams for the weekend’s games, noting how many games each player has played. They also celebrate milestones really well, highlighting personal achievements with posts on social media.
“That is something is crucial to succeeding in amateur sport – balancing participation with success,” Schofield explained. “There have been times where it has been slanted too far one way or other over the years.
“We’ve got great buy-in from our members by treating everyone the same. Junior players are just as valuable to us as our Premier players and we have integrated Seniors and Juniors well over the years.
“We are bigger than just a cricket club.”
The biggest example of that club philosophy has been around the efforts put in to growing women’s cricket at the club.
“We realised we weren’t catering for half of our community with 50% of the community female,” Schofield said.
“We ran a campaign to try and get girls playing the game and it went really well. Being part of the Karaka Sports Complex we were able to leverage that. Karaka Netball pushed girls to have a go.
“We have been able to get two girls teams this year, so we have grown the membership by two teams’ worth plus a number of fathers that have got involved in various senior teams as well.”
Now in the second half of the 2020-21 cricket season, Karaka Cricket Club is looking forward to the biggest annual event on its calendar – Ladies Day in February 27.
“It is the seventh edition of it and this is the biggest and most well-attended event we have at the club,” Schofield said.
“At the start it was to thank girlfriends, partners and mothers but now they bring their own friends along. It has really grown – there are past committee members, mothers of kids that played at the club once upon a time. It really is a community day rather than just the cricket fraternity.”
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