Kevin Whyte becomes a Life member
A proud main islander, Kevin begun his bridge journey in Balclutha in 1979 aged 31. He has been a member of our club since 2008 and treasurer for the last ten years.
Kevin is an accomplished bridge player, demonstrated by being the highest rated player in Xclubs for a number of years.
He loves the game and especially likes to play with partners who feature well in his little black book which kept count of the number of games with a partner and the number of wins and losses.
Kevin has a heart of gold, nearly always putting his wife Rosemary and daughters Claire and Anna first. I say “nearly” because Rosemary also deserves an award for her forbearance when Kevin has often disappeared to play tournaments leaving her to be Granny in charge. Kevin too is a doting and very much a hands on grandfather. Indeed his grandchildren are the lucky recipients of any prize money he wins at bridge tournaments.
So given all the family demands on his time, it is a small miracle that he finds the time needed to not only play bridge a couple of times each week, but manages to complete a myriad of administrative bridge club tasks.
Kevin took over the role of treasurer in 2016 and has developed a comprehensive set of comparative data since, not just of financial information but playing numbers and tournament entries, costs and profits.
Kevin provides financial reports to the Committee each month. Apart from providing a summary and state of the nation report, he also provides an analysis of any developing trend, for example our recent increase in electricity bills. He has spent many hours gathering historical data and then updating this so we have a complete club financial story.
In fact Kevin was only telling Clare in September that he has been trawling the archives to gather information to present a story at the club’s golden anniversary next year.
He has worked alongside Mike Neels and Bob Fearn to take advantage of changes to Compass. Cambridge bridge club is now the envy of most other NZ clubs as it has developed and integrated membership and subs into the new bridge scoring system called Compa$$.
Kevin has spent countless hours working tirelessly and without complaint to ensure bills are paid, members are up to date with sub and table money payments and the club pays its master points to New Zealand bridge. He spends hours reconciling and triangulating each dollar, resulting in flawless accounts that get audited each year. Kevin has and continues to put in much effort to ensure our club is ship shape financially. His support has also extended to the Waikato Area Pairs and Waikato Bays Regional Committee.
It is therefore with great pleasure that thanks to Mike’s nomination that on behalf of the bridge club, Clare was able to present Kevin with this life award.