A PLAN IS TAKING SHAPE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 27, 29 December 1939, Page 38

A PLAN IS TAKING SHAPE

Physical Welfare Organisation As Focus Of All Sporting Activity

machinery of State is now beginning its first measured turns to give shape and practical form to a plan which has been maturing since New Zealand first elected a Labour Parliament. A year ago, physical fitness was put on a poster for everyone to see, with a week of demonstrations, parades, and publicity. Feeling its way in strange waters, and limited by a natural official reluctance to spend except on a certainty, the Physical Welfare Branch (of the Department of Internal Affairs) did not immediately supply the goods it had advertised. Sport and physical fitness fell back into the hands of individual organisations. But now, at last, things are happening. Details of the organisation are appearing out of the generalisations of theory. Already, in three centres, six area instructors have been appointed. Appointments for three more districts will be made early in 1940. Soon, the organisation of 30 field workers in 14 centres through the country will be complete. The Physical Welfare Branch is taking its place as the focal point of sports activity in New Zealand. it is slow to move, the

Versatile Instructors Versatility is the key the instructors will use to open the door for development where developing is necessary, or extension where there is existing organisation for building on. Lloyd Woods is taking a Master of Arts degree into holiday camps into Southland, can talk economics with anyone willing (he lectured on the subject at Otago Univer. sity), has already revived a country repertory society to play in Invercargill, has ¢o-erdinated the work of sports clubs to arrange dates and co-operate in meetings, has secured ten times as much support as he expected for summer tramps through the Greenstone country, and is busy with half a dozen more localised activities. With him in Southland is Leila Story, a graduate of Dartford Physical Treining College, England. Her work

meets the demands of a host of women’s organisations wanting leaders trained for all manner of clubs and societies. In the Waikato Lance Cross, in the Waikato, who could once walk a mile in faster time than any other schoolboy in the British Empire, is a gymnast, swimmer, etcetera, and has opened his campaign from Hamilton by spreading the swimming idea through the formation of new clubs, while he lays the framework of an organisation which will leave every centre supplied with trained leaders in all forms of recreational activity. Rona Stephenson, who shares his work in the Waikato, widened her New Zealand experience as a school teacher with courses at Columbia and California Universities. In Wellington is Stewart McNichol, who is big enough to throw Lofty Blomfield about, and with him is Noeline Thomson, who took her M.A. and Diploma of Education at Otago University and has since then trained and instructed in New South Wales. Getting new ideas and putting them into practice is not the only work of these area instructors. They are specialists in organisation. When a sports body produces a plan of its own, they are on the spot to help carry it out if assistance is wanted.

The Wairarapa Lawn Tennis Associa. tion wanted to organise coaching: a Wellington officer of the Branch toured the district with R. Howe, winner of the last Easter tournament. They coached 350 players, senior and junior, gave eight demonstrations, and played two exhibition matches.

In golf, too, the contacts made by Branch officers are helping to enlarge the scope of club and association coaching schemes. Sport After School With a file of preferences from lads and lasses leaving school this year, officers in the areas at present in working order (Waikato, Wellington, Southland), will be able to assist young people into whatever sport interests them. With the germ of the central headquarters idea already watered by such cooperative organisations as the Pioneer Sports Club, in Christchurch, area officers are spreading the good news about the advantages of community recreational centres. Here, in a local hall, or, as will some day be the case, in a specially designed building, the district

committees (176 :already flourish) can bring together all the sports organisations in their areas. It will supply them with a headquarters for meetings, coordinate their work when advisable, and give them space for indoor games, instruction, lecture evenings, etc. Community Centres The idea spreads beyond sport, pure and simple. As Lloyd Woods has demonstrated in Southland, the body beautiful is not all that matters. Recreational centres can become community centres, with room for the choral, repertory, reading, or book societies beSides the badminton club, the gym. class, or the football club. Support for such a plan is growing apace in such centres as Rangiora, where the High School is taking the lead; or in that splendid example of enterprise at Feilding, in the North Island. Morfinsville and Matamata are nibbling at similar ideas. A tén-acre farm can hardly run a header-harvester, or a 30 h-p. -tractor. But ten ten-acre farmers can = easily combine to buy such equipment for common use, or to take the service of farm machinery hired out by a centrally operating firm. In the same way, one small club cannot build itself any meeting place, beyond the small pavilion the tennis or football club is able to find space for in a corner of its grounds. But ten small clubs can bring the weight of ten times as much membership and finance to bear upon the ever-present problem of accommodation.

Excited by all these exciting possibilities, the Physical Welfare Branch is growing up like a plant in a hydroponic tank, war or no war. From giving assistance to the factory’s inter-house team or keep-fit class, to helping a small town build a learn-to-swim pool, it has a host of details to keep it busy. Much has yet to be done: its work will not be corapleted within the lifetime of the young people working for it now; but it is growing, fast, and popularity will grow with it as its value becomes appreciated.