Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc.

Family, Fun and Fitness since 12 November 1968
Victoria's Premier Grass Track

Profile

Nicole Lopes

Nicole Lopes OAM is a Life Member, Past Key Official and Past Athlete of the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc., and an LAVic Life Governor. She is also the recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia. Nicole has been involved in Little Athletics for 22 years, is one of our longest serving volunteers and is one of 5 Life Members that has not served on the Committee.

Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc.
Nicole competed at the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc. in the mid 1970's. Her best event was the 800m. She registered her children at the commencement of the 2000/01 season and thus began her 21 years of voluntary services in Little Athletics. She was involved at the Centre for 13 years in total, 8 years as a Key Official and support person while her children were involved and an additional 5 years as a Key Official at the Waverley Open Day.

Nicoles first role was an U6 Assistant Age Group Leader and her involvement progressed from there. Nicole was a significant contributor at Centre level from 2002/05, where she played a vital role behind the scenes when her husband Steven was on the Committee and served as Centre President. Nicole never served on the Committee, but she always supported the other Committee Members by assisting with various jobs and picking up the loose ends. Some of these jobs included; organising and purchasing stock for the weekly sausage sizzles, purchasing canteen stock, assisting with the Trivia Night, assisting at the WLAC membership stall at the Glen Shopping Centre, designing name badges for Committee Members, designing promotional flyers, organising fundraising, producing fleece beanies from home, organising embroidery for uniforms, managing cross country clothing sales and filling in whatever other role needed to be done.

Nicole also held various weekly Key Official roles at the Centre, until the end of the 2006/07 season. Some of these roles included; Leopards Team Manager, Championship Team Manager, Relay Coach, Duty Roster Manager and Recording Assistant. As Championship Team Manager, Nicole represented the Centre at all Region and State Championship events, organising athletes entries, parent officials and duty, transporting and setting up the WLAC equipment and tents and managing the on-the-day affairs on behalf of the Centre. 

In 2008/09, Nicole was awarded Life Membership at the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc., in recognition of her outstanding service at and on behalf of the Centre.

Southern Metro Region
Nicole is the Competition Secretary of the Southern Metro Region. She has been involved at SMR for 16 years, has been a Committee Member for 7 years and is one of the longest serving members of the Region. She became involved at SMR in during the 2005/06 season, commencing her first role at SMR as a Key Official at the Track & Field Championships in 2006. 

During the 2005/06 season when Nicole's husband Steven was the SMR Controller of Officials, she assisted him with all the preparation and distribution of paperwork for the Key Officials and Centres General Officials. She also officiated as his assistant at Region Championships. For the past 16 seasons, Nicole has been responsible for processing entries for all Region events, initially assisting Steven during his time as Organising Secretary (2006/17) and later taking over the responsibilities and serving as the SMR Competition Secretary from 2018/21. Some of the responsibilities of this role include; Region entry processing and setting up the Meet Manager database for Relays, Track & Field and Cross Country, organising lane draws, developing programs and timetables, answering parent and athlete queries, preparing lane draws,  formatting the program booklets, preparing, formatting and printing all Call Room and event paperwork, prepare and print Key Officials and Communications paperwork, printing rules and regulations for distribution in Key Officials folders, preparing lane/hip number stickers, preparing Meet Manager file for import into Timing Solutions, collating and distributing results, attending all planning meetings and contributing her knowledge & experience in preperation for these events and liasing with LAVic to troubleshoot any anomolies. Nicole also served as SMR Webmaster from 2014/19, which included maintaining the website and IMG/Sports TG, TeamApp, creating and maintaining registration portals for events, exporting data and administering the SMR Facebook page.

Nicole has volunteered as a Key Official at the SMR Championship events since 2005/06, predominantly as Chief Computer Operator, and has been responsible for the processing of results. Her "on the day" responsibilities include; data input, processing heats to finals, liasing with referees regarding disqualifications or any other anomolies, printing result cards, printing result paperwork for distribution on the day, checking and validating VPB's, sharing her knowledge and experience as required and troubleshooting any issues that pop up. Nicole has only missed a small number of Region events due to work commitments, as a result of running her own business. During the 2007/08 season, results were managed manually and from 2008/09, SMR transitioned to Meet Manager which allowed results to be managed automatically. At the conclusion of each Region event, Nicole spent countless hours of her own time inputting and sorting results, preparing all the data and reports for Centres and submitting the Region results to LAVic. SMR was the first Region to introduce Live Website Results and Nicole was responsible for all the work involved to set this up. Live Results were first introduced at Region Relays at Springvale in 2010 and thanks to Nicole, she helped LAVic and other Regions set up and implement their Live Results in the seasons that followed.

In 2008/09 when Meet Manager was introduced, Nicole took the lead in its implementation across both the Region and State. She embraced Meet Manager and undertook the training when it was first rolled out, spending several hours day and night learning and familiarising herself with the software. Nicole understood Meet Manager's functionality better than anyone else in the Region, State or Office. Since its introduction, Nicole has been called upon by the LAVic Office regularly to assist with queries and has always volunteered her time to go into the office and train new competition personnel over the years. The LAVic Competition coordinators she has trained and continued to assist over this period have been Clare Burton, Lauren Dick, Matt Collister and Jennifer Chan, Liz Triffit, Michael Messini, Samantha Quinn and various others. Nicole has always been willing to train them in Meet Manager and is readily available to assist them with their email or phone enquiries, both pre and post State events.

Little Athletics Victoria
Nicole has been involved at LAVic/State level for 14 years, serving as a Key Official and a member of the LAVic Region Planning Committees. Her involvement commenced in 2007/08 once her active involvement at Centre level ceased.

When Meet Manager was introduced in 2008/09, Nicole was appointed Chief Meet Manager (Computer Operator) for all State Championship events. She has served as a Key Official at most State Championship and associated events since 2007, only missing a small number of State events due to work commitments, as a result of running her own business. Nicole has represented SMR at Region Planning meetings and RAC Meetings since 2014 and has attended various Centrefest and Gala Award Dinners.

Since Photo Finish and Meet Manager were introduced at a Region & State Level, Nicole has spent countless hours of her own time working from home, work, or at the Championship venues, setting up and testing the results systems, inputting entries and results, printing sheets, bar codes and hip numbers (and much more as described above). Nicole was instrumental in setting up the Computer Networks, to allow for the communications between both the Photo Finish and Meet Manager systems. Prior to each State Championship, Nicole often gives up her own time by attending the State venues on a Thursday and Friday to set up and test the Meet Manager and Photo Finish equipment. If there were any issues with software or equipment, Nicole and her team would stay up the night before the event, well past midnight, fixing these issues. Half of these events have been held at Country venues, such as Moe, Bendigo or Shepparton and they would be fixing issues from their motel rooms.

Little Athletics Australia/Australian Little Athletics Championships
Nicole was supposed to officiate at ALAC in 2008 in Melbourne but could not attend due to being sick. She subsequently officiated at the 2014 ALAC Championships as Chief Computer Operator, attending meetings prior to the event, setting up the networking of computers and liaising with Photo Finish in the days prior to the event and managing the results input, printing of results and cards and all associated duties involved on the day. She was even offered the opportunity to officiate at ALAC the following year in South Australia, but Nicole declined to other commitments. 

Eastern Metro Region Relay Championships
Nicole assisted in running Meet Manager at the EMR Relay Championships from 2009/11, always offering where she could, to teach the role to new people. On both occasions, this Championship event was the day after the Southern Metro Region Relays.

Mentone Relay Open Day
Nicole did the processing of all their entries via Meet Manager. She attended their preparation meeting during the week before, prepared their lane draws, worked out the timetable and formatted all the days’ event paperwork. She made all the changes for late entries, processed them all and then Key Officiated on the day processing all the results.

Frankston Championships
Nicole did the processing of all their entries via Meet Manager. She prepared their lane draws, worked out the timetable and formatted all the days’ event paperwork. She made all the changes for late entries and processed them all, then Key Officiated on the day processing all the results.

Waverley Open Day
Nicole volunteered as a Key Official at 9 Waverley Open Days. She initially served as Marshalling Manager and once we introduced a new results system and live results, Nicole used her extensive knowledge and experience and served as a Results Input Key Official. 

Honours & Recognition
Nicole Lopes is well respected throughout the Little Athletics Association. Her knowledge and experience is invaluable to the Association, she has a calm nature and is dedicated to getting her job done in an efficient manner. Although her children finished Little Athletics in 2007/08, Nicole remained committed to volunteer at all levels of the association, (Centre, Region, State and National). She has certainly been back bone of SMR for several years and LAVic results.

In 2008/09, Nicole was awarded Life Membership at the Waverley Little Athletics Centre Inc., in recognition of her outstanding service at and on behalf of the Centre.

On several occasions, Nicole has been nominated for the Little Athletics Victoria Volunteer of the Year awards. In 2013/14, Nicole was awarded Bronze and in 2014/15, Nicole was awarded Silver.

In 2013/14, Nicole was awarded the LAVic Meritorious Service Award in recognition of her continued support to the Association, especially with her children no longer involved in Little Athletics.

In 2017/18, Nicole was awarded LAVic Official of the Year, for her outstanding contribution the Association, along with receiving the Victorian Officials Award for the Southern Metro Region.

In 2018/19, Nicole was recognised for her commitment to Little Athletics, with a nomination submitted and endorsed by the LAVic Head Office, in the Vic Sport Volunteer of the Year Awards, "Victorian Community Official of the Year" category. Nicole's significant contribution to Little Athletics resulted in her nomination making it to the Top 4 in her category, in which she was presented with a "Finalist" award at the official awards ceremony.

The Victorian Sport Awards is the night of nights for the Victorian sporting community; celebrating participants, coaches, organisers and the volunteers behind the scenes from all levels of sport in Victoria.

Each year the Victorian Sport Awards honours those who have made an outstanding contribution to sport in Victoria as individual or team athletes, coaches, administrators and volunteers from both metropolitan and regional areas in Victoria.

Entrants in the Awards are nominated by state sporting associations, regional sport assemblies, teammates, club members, coaches or their local community in recognition of their outstanding contribution to sport and active recreation.

Nicole Lopes - Little Athletics

Nicole officiates at regional and state levels and typically performs the role of 'Computer Chief' where she oversees the electronic results and the coordination of the photo-finish electronic timing equipment. In 2018, Nicole officiated at the Regional and State Relay Championships, Track and Field Championships and the Victorian Cross Country. Nicole is also a member of the Southern Metropolitan Regional Committee, and a Life Member the Waverley Little Athletics Centre.

In 2018/19, Nicole was awarded the LAVic Distinguished Service Award, in recognition of her continued support and highly meritorious service to the Association. She was the third Waverley volunteer to receive this award.

In 2020/21, Nicole was awarded Life Governor of Little Athletics Victoria, in recognition of her highly meritorious and exemplary services to the Association, over a period of 21 years. She is the fourth Waverley volunteer to receive this award. 

Honour Board

Centre Involvement

Outside Centre Involvement

Region Involvement

State Involvement

National Involvement

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WLAC Life Member Steven Lopes, President Dylan Cooper & Life Member Nicole Lopes
Waverley Open Day
2014/15