COACH: Breigh Hammet.
ARRIVALS: Zali McMonnies, Maddi Alvino, Sophie Kroehn, Nina Ciszkowski.
DEPARTURES: Rebecca Harvey, Lucy Martin, Tia Farley, Tameika Sherlock.
AN increased depth of A and B grade players has Merbein primed to fly higher up the A Grade netball ladder in 2023.
Merbein A Grade coach Breigh Hammet is assembling an impressive squad for the new campaign with as many as 20 netballers having pushed for selection in the top two divisions, creating a very welcome selectors’ conundrum.
A combination of junior players stepping up to seniors, players in lower grades pushing their case, and new recruits to the Magpies means competition for places is expected to be fierce.
Among the ‘newbies’ to wear the black and white will be attacker Maddie Alvino, a former Mildura junior who returns to the region from Bendigo, and versatile tall Sophie Kroehn, who played GK for Imperials in 2022.
Experienced shooter Rebecca Harvey, however, will take some replacing, and Hammet herself is unsure of her playing stance following a horror ankle compound fracture late last season.
Ava Smith and Emma Martin both got a taste of senior netball in 2022, while Olivia Bowden and Shelby Hooker have also been nominated as players pushing for higher honours.
“We’re getting to where we want to be as a club,” Hammet said.
“The pre-season group we’ve been running has had 53 players and we’ve been averaging about 25 each session.”
After losing four matches in 2022 by five goals or less, Hammet believes a faster transition into attack could help reverse those results.
“Our defence has always been pretty good, it’s probably just in attack that we’ve needed to solidify a bit and get the speed of our ball movement going forward,” she said.
“In four games last year we lost by about five goals so if we can just get that movement down the court happening a bit faster I think it will help us.”
