THE celebrations have been loud at Sorrento Cricket Club after it was crowned the sporting club of the year last week at the 2024 Victorian Sport Awards. The massive win, announced at a ceremony on 14 May at the Melbourne Cricket Club, recognises not only their love for the game, but their commitment to creating a cricket club that welcomes all, and bringing the community together. The awards, which has 18 categories, celebrates the achievements of home-grown sporting heroes at both a grassroots and high-performance level.
Club president Ben McDonald said the honour was a great reward for effort including having established its first women’s senior team. “We are all thrilled,” he said. “It’s just a great achievement to make it; it’s next level with what it means to the club and all the other things that go with it – it puts you up there with the best and that helps with attracting players and sponsorships.”
Among the club’s achievements was winning Cricket Victoria’s Community Partnership of the Year after it hosted a female’s come and try day last October, which resulted in 24 women and 16 girls registering with the club. The club has also attracted enough players to have two teams in every age group except the under-14s.
In recent years, the club has made a concerted effort to drive its membership across all ages and abilities with a focus on community engagement, inclusivity and promotion of cricket, which it continued to build on while undertaking facility upgrades at its grounds at the David McFarlane Reserve. “We had a five-year plan where we wanted the club and it happened a lot earlier than that; we’ve achieved a lot of the things that we set out to do,” McDonald said. “It’s just consolidating what we’ve got and still trying to raise the bar and be innovative and encourage more girls and women to join.”
First published in the Mornington News – 20 May 2025
