It has been a fabulous start to 2023 with NetballSmart engagement through term 1 hitting a record high. When catching up with Gwen, our NetballSmart Development Officer, she said “It is great to be able to say at this point in the year that we have already had the privilege working with 531 Intermediate School aged Netballers and 485 Secondary School Netballers and their coaches across the full zone”. She attributes this to not only her hardworking NetballSmart Centre Activators Paula (Central) and Ariana and Wynetta (Invercargill) but the willingness of schools to embrace external support for their sports teams post-covid limitations. Gwen went on to say that her recent visit to Longford Intermediate was an absolute gem; “Not only did all their netballers attend and engage wonderfully with their team coaches, but 20+ parents stayed at the end for invaluable Smart Parent chat. If all intermediate schools out there took advantage of this workshop format, down the track we will reap the benefits with strong smart movers on the netball court and a byproduct of reduced injury rates. I am excited to see how these players develop”.
Gwen also went on to mention that across the zone 158 coaches have been through NetballSmart workshops and 18 Umpires through UmpireSmart workshops so far this year. “We’ve also had some great engagement in social netball, primary schools, the zone pathways programmes and the Steel Roadie – where Steel members took 800+ young netties through warm ups, landings and strength stations – what heroes!”.
When asking what she suggests a focus is moving into the season she said “Freshening up the warm-up is a great plan moving into the start of term. For Years 5-8 the NetballSmart Power-Warm Up is perfect, for secondary school and club level go for the full NetballSmart Dynamic Warm-Up and social netball go for the Social Warm-Up. These can be found here NetballSmart Resources. A warm-up should build in intensity and contain basic strength elements like bench & side bench, squats and lunges to equip netballers for stable landings, stopping and direction changes. In 2022 we surveyed warmups at SISS, UNISS and LNISS, we found that the South Zone in general were one of the better performing zones, but across the board not enough landings, stopping and direction changes were seen in the warm-up to optimize the injury prevention and performance enhancement benefits of the NetballSmart warm-up”.
You can connect with Gwen on
