Lorraine Woodman might be almost 89, but you wouldn’t know it from her reaction to getting an OAM in the Australia Day honours.
“Pretty stoked, yeah,” Ms Woodman said, sounding more like a surfer at Bells Beach than a resident at an Altona retirement home.
The laconic vocabulary makes a little more sense when you consider she’s been recognised for volunteering at dozens of sporting clubs over the last 32 years, including Seddon, Altona and Yarraville Club cricket clubs, the Footscray Indoor Cricket Centre, Western Region All-Abilities Cricket and many more.
Having hung around so many clubrooms, it’s not surprising she’s adopted some of the slang commonly heard in them.
Nor is it surprising that such a selfless volunteer is quick to share the honour with others.
“This award is really for a lot of people, not just me,” Ms Woodman said, referring to all those who’ve helped her since she first began volunteering in 1994.
“I started at Footscray Indoor Cricket Centre relieving for a couple of weeks, organising the competition while someone went on leave,” she recalled, adding that the younger of her two boys being disabled also led to her volunteering in sport, as well as competing and even winning.
“There was a mile race at Melton at the school my disabled son attended,” Ms Woodman recalled of her greatest sporting triumph.
“So me being an athlete, which I was from my 40’s to 70’s in Masters Games, I pushed my son in his wheelchair to compete in this race and I won my age group and went on to be the outright winner which the prize for was a Russian cruise.”
These days she pushes her son, now 62, around Western Bulldogs’ home games instead.
Ms Woodman’s a lifelong supporter of the club where her father played reserves.
Even her nephew, Ricky Olarenshaw, becoming a premiership player at Essendon wasn’t enough to change her allegiance.
“Nothing would turn me away from the Doggies,” Ms Woodman said.
The same goes for volunteering it seems, with her weekends and weeknights still taken up doing whatever’s needed for whatever sporting club needs her.
As for how much longer?
“Until they get sick of me,” Ms Woodman declared.
So, not any time soon.
