Joanne Fryer is the volunteer of the year for Owen Sound Minor Soccer.
The minor sports organization provided the following information about the recent recognition:
This year’s winner of the Margaret Hoffman Award — Joanne Fryer — has been around Owen Sound Minor Soccer for more then 15 years. Like many, she started as an active parent and then quickly took on more responsibilities as her kids came up through the organization. In 2017, she came on to the board and took on one of the biggest roles as the field scheduler. In this role, she was responsible for scheduling field time for not only Owen Sound Minor soccer house league and rep programs but adult soccer as well. This involves an enormous amount of organizational skills and patience as you are required to work with various groups and individuals, many of which don’t possess the same level of organization that she demonstrated.
In addition to this she could always be counted on to take on more duties when we required it as an organization. The field scheduling role grew into gym scheduling for futsal and rep teams. She was a manager of a rep team for 7 years. She coordinated the ordering of rep uniforms for all reps teams for a number of years and even coordinated picking up house league uniforms for us if it benefited the organization both financially and logistically. She also took on the duties for social media for a couple years when the position went unfilled.
As soccer has continued to experience an increase in participation post-covid, the job gets increasingly more challenging. However, the best way to gauge how someone performs the role is how little complaints we get regarding scheduling. This year we had zero complaints coming up to the board level which was indication of her organizational skills, understanding the organization’s needs and ability to work with others that certainly helped make 2023 a successful outdoor season.