Our team
contact is:
President/Secretary: Fran Kennedy
frankennedy@paradise.net.nz
Phone: 04 905 5491
Coach and President: Graham
Lawton
We are grateful of the help given to us by Pub Charity to enable us to attend the
National Display in Christchurch in March 2010
The Happy Team at Taupo - 2010
The idea of leisure marching on the Kapiti Coast was inspired by an item
on The Holmes Show in 1991 when he interviewed the newly formed Tauranga team.
Proving age was no barrier, a group of over 50’s Kapiti Coast women formed their own
marching team and called it the JOYSTEPPERS. A year later we added the name Waikanae and
became the WAIKANAE JOYSTEPPERS. Our first march was at the Levin Christmas Parade in
December 1991.
The Joysteppers needed a coach and looked for someone with an ex army or Waaf background
to teach them the finer points of marching. With a brass band background and a little time
spent in the Military, Graham Lawton was soon seconded to our team as our Coach. He is
still our Coach some 17 years later.
A poem written by Zel Gibson one of our Marchers at the time says it all about our Coach.
We’re the
friendly Waikanae Joysteppers
No doubt you have
already heard
We march with precision
and care
And always a friendly
word
Our coach you know is
one so rare
He plans our every
routine
With earnest passion
and meticulous flare
He guides with skill
our marching
So Graham please
without any fuss
Do carry on tutoring
all of us.
The criteria of our marching team is to adhere to all the objects and aims in our
Constitution with particular emphasis on the leisure marching MOTTO “Fun,
Fitness and Friendship".
The team in 1992 |
