Canterbury legend celebrates 20 years

The principles of coaching sport to primary school children has not changed much in the 20 years Tony Harvey has been working at Sport Canterbury.

Tony or TH as he is also known is a legend in Canterbury football circles but is just as well known in primary schools in the Canterbury region. Tony celebrated 20 years of working for the Canterbury West Coast Sports Trust earlier this month.

As one of the original KiwiSport coordinator Tony said 20 years ago they were teaching the same basic skills and fair play principles as they are now. “Kids today still need to learn these fundamental skills before they start to play sport and we are now working with teachers to help them to teach these disciplines to the children.”

Tony was the driving force behind the KiwiSport Road Shows that delivered sport to most primary schools in the Canterbury region. “There was a core group of about 16 of us from a variety of sports who worked together, but if we didn’t have a sport specific coach I filled the gap. So I have coached an enormous variety of sports over the years.”

Along with being responsible for KiwiSport delivery Tony developed the Holiday Programme that is still being delivered by Sport Canterbury today. Tony also developed and delivered basic training to primary school teachers; this is still a big part of Tony’s job today.

Tony’s passion for grassroots sport and for teaching the basics and getting children playing sport has not dwindled and even though a confirmed football fanatic all sports get a fair chance when TH is working with young people.

These days Tony wears a number of different hats, and these include, teacher training, as well as pre service training for people training to be teachers, the Rebel Sport Kiwi Sport Challenge and more recently he has taken officials under his wing and soon will be working with clubs to deliver the ClubMark accreditation programme.