“Motherly” Chaperon

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 2

“Motherly” Chaperon

(N.Z.P.A. Staff CorretptMtM) EDINBURGH, July 20.

Mrs Betty McKenna has won the greatest accolade that can be given any chaperon of a team of women athletes.

Miss Julie Davidson, i women’s writer of “The Scots- | man,” said the New Zealand: team chaperon from Auckland does not look like one. "She does not wear intimldating black bombazine or! disapproving pince-nez. She! looks forward to the day ■ when New Zealand sporting! authorities cancel the title ! chaperon and substitute "Ladies' team manager,” which is what most other countries call the shepherdesses in Charge of the female flocks of competitors at in-1 ternational competitions.” "Chaperon is a pretty outmoded term and it does not really describe my function at the games. I do not go round cracking a Whip over the girls’ heads or locking them in their rooms," Miss McKenna said.

"I just provide a kind of motherly shoulder available I for the deposit of anyj troubles or problems," Mrs McKenna, said Miss Davidson was not an archetypal mother figure. “She is rather more glamorous than your average mum but she does have the statutory maternal qualities of warmth, sympathy and humour in noticeable quantities."

The New Zealand women’s team of 20 is the largest New Zealand has sent abroad.

The youngest is the 14-year-old swimmer, Miss Susan Hunter, and the oldest Mrs Rosemary Sharpe, a fencer, who is the mothei* of two children.

“The group," Mrs McKenna said today, “is the best behaved one I’ve chaperoned."