TEAM PLAYERS

The stakes have been raised in Yorkshire where helpers just got a new level of volunteer va-va-voom

- James Shrubsall

Sign up to give back. That’s what we’re urging you to do right now by registering your interest in volunteering at an event this year. But British Cycling’s Yorkshire region is taking ‘giving back’ to another level – by giving back to its volunteers.

Team Yorkshire (TY) brings all the volunteers in this sizeable region under one umbrella and gives them not just a snazzy polo shirt but a sense of belonging and a huge network of like-minded people who could even turn out to be good friends one day.

At Team Yorkshire’s first major event – the Grasscrete Ryedale Grand Prix last August – its members provided a cheerful and ubiquitous presence around the race, their bright blue TY jerseys marking them out immediately as part of the race organisation and lending it an extra air of professionalism.

BC Yorkshire region’s vice-chair Marc Etches is a key figure in setting up TY. It’s all about rewarding the people who give up their time for free, he says.

“We’re trying to reach out to these volunteers – your commissaires, your judges, your drivers, your marshals, your organisers,” he says. “It’s those who stand on the corner with a flag – or not nowadays – those who put the time in, week in, week out, and just for the love of the sport. We said, how do we bring them all on board and reward them?”

Part of the idea, says Etches, who also organises the Sheffild Grand Prix and is the chair of Sheffrec CC (he’s a busy chap), is also to bring the regional board closer to the people it represents and help to close what can be quite a big gap.