Inspire Magazine 2019-20

new provision for senior
There’s no doubt that life can sometimes be easier
when you “stick to what you know”. But it’s also
true to say that we don’t always get what we want
by playing things safe.
In June 2018, on the back of a super-successful
year for our junior provision, myself, Lawrie & Jess
sat down to discuss the possibility of starting up a
“Back to Netball” programme, after more than a
few requests from parents started to filter in! For
us, it seemed like too big a risk to plough time
and energy into something that was outside of
our bullseye, and the easiest thing to do at that
moment in time would have been to park it for
another day when we’d developed more leaders.
But being who we are, we decided to give it a go!!
Remarkably, an incredible 56 women turned up for
our first session, and to say we were blown away
would be a big understatement. But the bad news
was, we could only really fit 40 women in as an
absolute max on an ongoing basis, and even that
was at a push! But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and
we knew we had something significant to work with
across 2018/19 and plan to be in a better position for
this year. So I’m delighted to say therefore, that our
brand-new “Senior & Youth” programme has been
established this year with a capacity of 72 girls and
women aged 16-60!!
This has been huge for us, as it's allowed us to not
only accommodate all the women that wanted
to get involved, but also create a home for those
graduating from our Under 15’s teams at our clubs. It
was always heart-breaking when girls got “too old”
to take part in our provision, so the establishment
of this programme has been really special for us.
But the fun (and challenge!!) didn’t stop there...
because our original plan of 8 teams filled up so
quickly - leaving a lot of women who didn’t secure
a place very disappointed - that we had to go back
to the drawing board… again!! And I’ll never forget
Jess saying with her best impression of Puss’n’Boots,
“we can’t just say no, can we?!”
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