A volunteer netball and football coach from Cwmbran has been named as BBC Wales Sport’s Unsung Hero for 2016.
PE teacher Vicki Randall turned to coaching after being forced to give up playing netball and football because of injury.
The 29-year-old has encouraged more than 200 girls to play sport every week.
“I say quite often to them I don’t care about the score, I just want them to enjoy it,” Vicki told BBC Sport Wales.
“I know that they appreciate everything that I do and at the end of the sessions they’ll all say thank you.”
Vicki set up Cwmbran Celtic Ladies FC in 2012, guiding them to promotion to the Welsh Premier league two years later and also started a reserve team to encourage women to take up the sport.
Vicki also set up Cwmbran Youth netball club in 2009 with just five girls, which has now grown to 14 teams. Three players have recently been selected for Wales U-17 squad. She also organises a weekly ‘netball tots’ club for children aged between one and five and runs Risca Netball Club, managing all five of their teams in the South East Wales League.
She typically spends four evenings a week coaching sport after work, often more than one session per evening. At weekends, she spends most Saturdays organising netball matches and tournaments, before devoting up to seven hours on a Sunday to her football teams.
Despite undergoing nine operations on her knee she has continued to coach, sometimes on crutches or in a wheelchair.
Vicki’s achievement will be recognised at the Wales Sport Awards 2016 on Monday, 5 December at Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff. She will share the stage with the night’s other big winners including Coach of the Year, Team of the Year and the prestigious BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year.
The Wales Sport Awards 2016 will be broadcast live from 19.30 GMT on Monday, 5 December at the BBC Wales Sport website and also on BBC iPlayer and the Red Button. The event will also be live on BBC Radio Wales.
