Longstanding volunteer: Linda White takes a break from the badminton court. Picture by Liam Clayton
Linda White has been involved in badminton in one way or another for a long time. Now a super-veteran, she is still a driving force of the local association, even running the app on her phone to open the doors remotely if someone misplaces their key.
“It just happened,” she said, of how she got started in badminton.
“My parents were involved in badminton in Hastings, and met at the St Matthews Badminton Club. My father Harold Mayo was a patron of Badminton Hawke's Bay. Helping out would get you an honorary role. He was a life member of Badminton Hawke's Bay and won a service award from Badminton NZ. My mother Valda volunteered in swimming, and became a life member of Havelock North Swimming Club and HB-PB Swimming. Our family has always been involved in the volunteer world.”
Linda grew up in Hastings, and went to Palmerston North Teachers College when she left school. With her qualifications under her belt she went teaching in Whanganui, then to Taihape. There shemet and married Gordon White, a farmer, and put her feet down at Mangaohane Station, east of Taihape.
“My husband was there for over 15 years as a shepherd and cropping manager, and supervised installing a water supply from the Erewhon Rural Water Scheme, miles of pipeline and troughs,” she said.
“In 1980 we moved to Wharekopae, and managed Marewa Station, owned by Tahora Blocks, for five years. The station backs on to the Ureweras. The incorporation bought a fattening block at Rere, and we were there for 20 years.”
During those years Linda was involved with many groups and committees, and taught part-time. Badminton was a good break.
Gordon and Linda bought an orchard at Patutahi, growing a variety of citrus fruit and crops, which she now share-farms.
“My children keep telling me I need to declutter and move to town,” she said with a laugh.
“I've gathered a lot of stuff.”
Her children, Hamish and Jacque, followed in her sporting footsteps, and were both selected for central region teams and played in Australasian U17 badminton tournaments, first in Melbourne, then in Perth and Invercargill.
“We had a top team of U14 players in Gisborne that came second in New Zealand,” she said. As a volunteer she travelled as a NZ umpire to those events, supporting her children and doing what she loved.
Living in the country, Linda and her husband boarded their children in Gisborne for five years, where they attended Boys' High and Girls' High respectively. Both were active in sport.
Linda now has a couple of part-time education jobs, moving into teacher resources and easing away from chalk and blackboards. She has been at Waikirikiri School for around 18 years, where with new classrooms and buildings, she has been managing resources.
She also worked in the library at Sonrise Christian School and puts in some part-time hours at Patutahi as well.
She says that school libraries are not what they used to be because of technology, and she has seen a lot of changes in education since her first class in Whanganui more than 40 years ago.
Now to balance her working life she plays bridge, learns te reo and has recently joined U3A, but her overriding love is still badminton.
She represented Manawatu, Whanganui and Eastland, and these days still gives the shuttlecock a good hurry-up on courts around the country. She has just returned from inter-association ties in Auckland's North Harbour, representing the province in the super-veterans.
When her children came along she kept playing, but expanded into volunteering and helping develop her own and others' skills, managing teams, coaching, then umpiring and refereeing. She is a New Zealand referee, refereeing events annually.
Four are coming up this year, the next of which is the New Zealand secondary schools' tournament at Porirua during Sports Week.
Along the way she has received numerous Badminton New Zealand and local awards for administration and services to sport.
“I've learned lots of life skills and it's opened avenues that I never would have seen,” she said.
Volunteering is still a huge part of her life. She was treasurer at Badminton Eastland for at least 20 years before passing the baton on.
She received a life membership of the Association in 2018 and is president of the committee.
“They're all fantastic volunteers,” she said.
“In my case I started at the grass roots and worked my way through. If you start at the bottom you know how the whole thing works.”
She is part of a team that run all the local tournaments, inter-school days, coaching in schools, and the day-to-day running of the Badminton Centre. Everyone is a volunteer.
They receive a lot of support from Sport Gisborne, Badminton New Zealand and numerous other local groups and individuals.
As a parent refereeing or doing other jobs in the background, she said she would get a mixed reception from her own children, but the benefits were being able to discuss the game with them probably at a deeper level than had she been just a spectator.
“You get skills out of volunteering that you never knew you had. For all our volunteers there are pathways to supervise kids, coaching, and pathways to umpiring at the international level. Coaching is the same.
Besides the app on her phone to open the doors to the clubhouse, the booking system at the hall is electronic, and a coaching app called Shuttle Time offers potential volunteer coaches a wealth of exercises and training routines for players, all at the touch of a button on their cellphone.
“At the moment badminton is booming in Gisborne,” she said.
“There are a lot of casual players. We have 12 teams in BIZminton, a mercantile competition where businesses supply teams.
“We have a high school badminton club called The Hotshots, and sometimes they have had up to 42 players at their club nights. Two of our committee have started coaching there, but due to a scarcity of volunteers the students often have to wait between games and need other activities, such as table tennis, to keep them occupied. Kiwi Badminton Club, for younger players, is also booming, with a volunteer in charge.
“We do need to get more people in as volunteers.”
One of the highlights of her volunteering is encouraging people of all ages and at all levels to play. There are players from six to 90 among the groups that use the hall, tucked in behind the YMCA building in Childers Road.
“There's quite a good 84-year-old playing. They play for two hours in the morning, twice a week,” she said.
Linda has won plenty of games and although she now says they are just a “background blur”, she still delights in having a game.
“You don't get head injuries,” she laughed. “Knees, hips and back are the problems nowadays.”
As well as the competition, Linda finds meaning through the volunteering that keeps her involved — skills development, watching others grow in the game, and the camaraderie among different teams that have met before on various courts around the country.
“We have people with a long-term interest in the sport, and that's really important,” she said.
But does she still have or even need that killer instinct?
“It's about out-skilling the opponent. On the court it's different. We're just happy to have a win.”