Gerald Lynch
The Young Achiever Awards are recognising the most dedicated and impressive young people across the country, and Craigieburn’s own Adam Bell is among the best and brightest nominees.
The 25-year-old is up for a Young Sports Leader award, and is the president of the Craigieburn Referees Association Branch.
A role typically taken up by someone much older, although Adam has controlled the position with maturity beyond his years, and has led the referees to success through his warm and welcoming leadership style.
Life member of the Craigieburn Basketball Association Jason Moore said Adam is a strong assertive leader and would be a deserving recipient of the award.
“The role was forced upon him post covid as the leaders of this branch had moved on leaving the role open,” he said.
“I personally have seen Adams finest work when being questioned on too many young Referees with too much inexperience post co-vid. Adams ability to effectively communicate to a non Referee room (parents mainly) of people on the challenges that all Referees are encountering post co-vid has been extremely challenging.
“As the general population come to terms with a shortage of Referees and the community as a whole disrespecting Referees (and Umpires) and as a Sporting Association endeavouring to educate and support the Referees Association as a whole for a more respectful community.”
Mr Moore described Adam as having the ability to diffuse volatile situations and having strong personal and professional qualities that hold competitions together.
Adam is now growing internally and externally as he has the confidence within his simplified but structured process of recruitment and retainment, as he explores to grow his own leadership ambitions for leading this Referee Program like the big associations of Eltham, Keilor, Knox and Dandenong just to name a few to align his standards to theirs as he continues to enhance Craigieburn Basketball Association Referees to be similar to the basketball benchmarks within Victoria.
