The Moree senior cricket season is well under way, but it's the juniors who have been stealing the spotlight, with a record number of registrations to kick off the 2019 season.
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Moree Junior Cricket was sitting at 213 registered players by the end of last season, while that number is already up to 218 just two weeks into the current season.
"It generally grows. It picks up a lot more after Christmas," Moree Junior Cricket vice-president David Watts said.
"People moving to town, kids see their friends playing and want to join."
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As for the growth at the start of the season, Watts put that down to a number of factors.
"We've been pushing cricket in the district. It goes back a long time," he said.
"We've had previous committees running it for 40 kids. The hard work they've done is benefiting us now.
"I think a big thing is we've had a lot of kids in the district make representative sides and when that's talked about, people see that and want to start playing.
"Having good facilities is a big difference. Having an oval look like a cricket oval."
The junior competition is split up into four divisions including the Junior Blasters with skills and drills for the younger players, before moving up to the Master Blaster program which introduces games, before the JC1 and JC2 programs.
With such high numbers, one of the JC2 games has had to be moved to Friday afternoons, which Watt describes as a "good dilemma" to have.
"Our problem is the Friday night doesn't suit a lot of people," he said.
"We get a lot of kids coming from Warialda, that's obviously boosted our numbers.
"We get kids coming from Boomi, Mungindi, you can't expect them to be in town on Friday afternoon by 4pm."
Due to the limitations in fields, players are assigned to divisions based on abilities, with some 11-year-olds playing in JC2.
"It is a big step up for some of those kids. We have to monitor that," Watts said.
"We've got an obligation to make sure kids are playing in the right division."
In addition to the high overall numbers, there's also been a sharp increase in young female players joining in.
There are 55 girls currently registered, which is the most the Moree district has had.
"We've got coordination with Vinnie Cameron from Cricket NSW at Tamworth, we're running a four week girls program starting at the end of November," Watts said.
"We can only take 24 girls, so the first 24 girls. That'll just be a four week program run by them on a Monday afternoon, just encourage girls to play."
Watts said it's been a great start to the junior season.
"It's been a really good two weeks. Numbers are good and we've got good parent help right through," he said.
"Obviously we've got a committee but if we don't get parent's help it's very hard. We need umpiring and scoring done.
'It's still a bit of an early process. It takes us a few weeks to get the teams sorted properly, we want them to be as fair as possible."
While the local program has started strong, Moree has also been able to field both an under-12s and under-14s representative sides for the first time.
Both sides are yet to register a win, but Watts said being able to field two representative sides was a win in itself.
"The coaches have got kids who haven't played rep before, but just to be able to put two rep sides together for the comp this year is a benefit," he said.
Moree Junior Cricket continues on this weekend.