IN the space of six months, Mildura Netball Association has quadrupled the number of players in its competitions.
Blossoming to 108 teams this season, the association had navigated some initial difficulties in shifting its home base from Mansell Reserve to Mildura Sporting Precinct.
“Everybody obviously wanted a piece of it,” Mildura Netball Association president Alex West said of the sports precinct.
“Because you were taking multiple sports out to the precinct, everybody already had their previous competitive days that those sports had become accustomed to running their competitions on.
“Due to the scheduling, it was really, really difficult to compete to get those spaces out at the precinct.
“We played the game, and we tried to blend our model and have nights of competition out there on Tuesday night and a Thursday night, I think we tried nearly every day of the week, but we always hit the same brick wall, which was competing with the football-netball leagues in the area and access to the athletes and the players.”
Ms West said the association had worked through the issue with the support of MSP staff, locking in an agreement to access one indoor court on Monday and Wednesday night, to complement use of the outdoor courts.
“They fully supported us in that schedule change and we’ve been able to demonstrate over the last six months that by changing our access to the sporting precinct to those dates, we have gradually grown to exploding to the numbers that we have, which is actually now in excess of what we were operating at Mansell Reserve,” she said.
“The reality is there’s only six indoor courts (at MSP), and there’s lots of sports that are vying for those.
“We still now have a blended model where we have primary use of the courts indoors on a Saturday and access to all the outdoor courts, but we also have use on one indoor court on a Wednesday night and a Monday night, which allows us to spread that usage across.”
Ms West said there had also been significant growth in the mixed netball competition, which demonstrated the increasing interest in the sport.
“We’ve got 28 mixed teams playing on a Monday night, which is absolutely phenomenal,” she said.
“Not only are we getting loads of junior interest, and we’re also seeing our business model changing too for that social side of things.
“It’s really good from a social cohesion space that we’ve got men and women coming out and just playing for fun, which is great.”
