In celebration of Volunteers’ Week 2025, we asked members of our community to nominate a volunteer who has made a difference to them. Today’s spotlight is on Keith McCarthy.
Keith McCarthy is a volunteer and event organiser for local and regional competitions, as well as a coach at national events.
“Keith runs two clubs: Monday night senior club and Friday night junior club. He is also a coach for the university club. He spends all the time at senior club giving lessons, so has no time to fence himself. The junior club is one of the most fun nights of the week, with fitness footwork and fencing taking place in an organised chaos kind of way. Keith organises and runs The Youth Series competitions, where he does not even have time to coach the fencers that he has encouraged to be there from club.
“He does all the organisation for four Series competitions a year and the Merseyside Open, including finding a venue, venue set-up, Sport:80, sourcing referees, FencingTimeLive, medal ceremonies – all this including storing all the competition admin laptops and printers.
“He works a full-time job six days a week and then volunteers for fencing at least three nights a week. When not organising a competition on a weekend, he is coaching at competitions with senior fencers.”
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