Scone Junior Ruby League hosted their annual Where There’s A Will round on the weekend and while it was a bit tricky to spot the rainbow socks through the mud, the message was as strong as ever.
Kirsty Hails, a WTAW board member, explained that the initiative started a few years ago and has spread across different codes throughout the Upper Hunter since.
“They’ve just gotten bigger and bigger and they’ve now become an opportunity for us to spread the education of wellbeing out into the community, beyond the schools,” she said.
“It’s amazing to see as the years go by that wellbeing is more and more embedded in the children that are coming through, they understand the language they understand resilience, they understand what their strengths are, and that’s a huge kudos to this community.”
As part of the WTAW round teams are encouraged to wear rainbow socks and families can purchase merchandise that helps raise money for the community organisation.
“The presentation of the medal is a really good opportunity to share the wellbeing message with the families because they all come to listen to who’s getting the medal presented to them, but it’s also a chance for us to be able to talk about resilience to talk about teamwork to talk about the fact that we can celebrate when someone does something really special and not everybody has to get a medal and we can be proud of our teammates,” Kirsty explained.
Resilience was on show last Saturday when the juniors from the Hunter Valley competition took to the field in very wet and muddy conditions.
“Most of the kids have absolutely loved playing in the mud today, and they’ve had big smiles on their face. I think it’s been worse for the parents that have had to stand in the rain and watch,” Kirsty said with a laugh, also acknowledging the parents may not be so happy to wash the gear after the games.
-Jem Anshaw
