Driving force behind WA girls cricket recognised

With Western Australia having made a strong case in recent seasons to be considered the country's new cricketing powerhouse, one particular Perth-based volunteer has been following suit off the field.

Kirsten Piccinini, who fills the role of girls' coordinator at both Wembley Districts Junior Cricket Club and the Central Junior Cricket Association in the WA capital, is this year's NRMA Insurance Volunteer of the Year in Cricket Australia's National Community Cricket Awards for 2024.

Piccinini came into cricket roughly a decade ago, boasting zero knowledge of the sport but armed with a background in volunteering and social work and a desire to find a team for one of her two daughters.

"My kids had been introduced to cricket through a PE teacher at school, who was an ambassador for girls' cricket," she tells cricket.com.au. "It was a little bit more of a challenge finding a girls team at the time at some of the clubs, and so she pointed me in the direction of Wembley."

At the time, Wembley's two girls' teams only had one another in the area to play against each weekend, though in the years since, the landscape has changed significantly, thanks in no small part to Piccinini.

After a few introductions, and one in particular with Wembley legend Margie Oldfield (who she describes as "very inspirational"), Piccinini was only too happy to get involved herself; hailing from a wheat-sheep town in the south of WA, the notion of pitching in and lending a hand where it is needed is in Piccinini's blood.

"My family always has volunteered, and that's going back generations," she says. "It just was something I always saw done, and it was really always very enjoyable."

And so she threw herself into the happenings at Wembley, and even at a wider, policy-making level through attending WACA meetings and having a say in the way girls' cricket – which was then in its infancy – was to be structured and fostered

"From a very early stage, I was involved in that kind of policy framework," she says. "It's been nice to have a structural perspective of what's happening with the game, looking at: how are we shaping this? What are we trying to do?

"It was more engaging, because you're seeing what other clubs are doing. And you're seeing where the growth is … and you really got a nice little bird's eye view of what's happening in cricket across the whole state."

Fast forward a decade from those first steps and Piccinini is an integral member of Wembley DJCC, where she also wears the hat of vice-president, and with the seniors, she is manager of women's cricket.

Her background in social work has also equipped her with an expert understanding of the developmental stages of childhood, which has been beneficial in structuring not only pathways, but means of involvement in the club for Wembley's young cricketers beyond simply playing the game. The development of such a culture, Piccinini explains, has been with a bigger picture in mind.

"Cricket can offer a lot more to a child than just being in a team, or just developing a new skill in a new sport," she says. "It's very good in terms of developmental achievements for a child. At ages five to eight, for example – the Cricket Blast program – I don't see other sports doing quite what cricket does. Let's call it the 'Bluey' effect of, 'Come and play with your children, and come and make friends with other parents who are also playing with their children, and let's just have fun with this'.

"That's a lovely stage for kids and their parents, and it's what the kids need developmentally at that time.

"Then from age nine, cricket does a really nice thing where it says, 'OK, now you get to be part of a team, and you get to make friends in a team, and you're stepping up a little bit.

"Again, that is exactly what a child needs at that time – they need to firm up their friendships, they need to feel part of a team, and they need to step up a little bit and break away a little bit from Mum and Dad.

"And then in teen years, you do see that kids want to embrace more responsibility, and they might not necessarily want to be told what to do anymore. And that's the time I think you can lose kids in sport, you can see them dropping out."

"What I think Wembley do very well is stop some of that dropping out. They really embrace the kids becoming involved in their club in a meaningful way. They say, 'Do you want to umpire? Do you want to have your first job in our club? Do you want to come down and get paid to train and learn to umpire?'

"We've got 10 girls who come down and volunteer on Friday nights, and you can see it's a very important role at this time in their lives. As a teenager, you want to break out from just being told what to do, you want to develop your own sense of yourself and your skills and your passions.

"These girls really thrive on that. They love that they've got a different role, and that it's something they're doing for themselves on a Friday night. They come down, they're independent, they set it up, they tell the adults what to do, tell the kids what to do.

"And they are role modelling – as an older person to a younger person, this is what being a lovely person is in your teenage years – and they're very aware that the little kids look up to them."

It is little coincidence that through Piccinini's time at the club, recognition is coming the way of some of Wembley's young players off the field, with club members Ava Danholt (2023-24) and Neel Kalia (2021-22) both named WACA Young Volunteer of the Year for their impressive contributions.

"We're very proud of that, because it benefits the kids," she adds. "It's such a nice thing to see, that they've grown up with the club and now they're stepping out as very confident and very skilled young adults.

"Cricket has been the vehicle for that, but it's not about them being a great cricket player – we're just proud that they're now a great young person who is really going to contribute to their community in whatever form."