Netball Tasmania and St Patrick’s College have come together to share the announcement of a historic partnership to deliver the first Netball School Endorsed Program in the state.
This program provides students with an exclusive opportunity to develop netball skills on and off court. The School Endorsed Program is the first of it’s kind in Tasmania and is designed to assist in the development of the sport in schools and the local community. Students will participate in the three-term program under the guidance of coach, Katie O’Neill.
Experienced Coach Katie shared her excitement about the program.
"It's really exciting to partner up with St. Patrick's College and Netball Tasmania and get this partnership off the ground and running and it's been a really positive start. The girls are all super keen and excited about it and I'm really excited to be running the program.
It's also about learning to train at that next level, you know, as well. I think that's really important. You know, things like coming to training with no jewelry on and and just all those sorts of little things that, you know, you start to do at that next level. It's that expectation of, before time is on time and coming prepared, drink bottles, no jewelry, and just with a real positive attitude of wanting to learn and learning how to train at that next level."
Head of Learning for HPE at St Patrick's College Alastair Biffin share his excitement to be able to offer netball as part of their Athlete Development programing.
"We've got a number of students that have the capacity that a really high level in a range of different sports and so we've I guess we've got the resources and the means to be able to offer high level programs. A number of schools around the state offer athlete development generalized programs, but we decided to deviate away from that and offer more specialized. So we've got it in soccer, netball, basketball and AFL. At the moment in netball, we've got 10 students, but I guess this is a more of a foundation year, this is our first year and we'll see how it's going to go.
But I think it's been really positive so far and so then hopefully next year and beyond we'll be able to extend and expand further."
Sienna Bembrick, a St Patrick's student taking part in the program is excited to see where it can take her.
"I love it so much because I get to learn new skills every day and with the girls as well, it's really fun playing with them.
I started playing in about year 6 and I want to just keep, you know, learning about it and getting in better divisions."
