Blog by Louise, Sep 2013.
Last weekend I played a netball match with my team. This is exciting for several reasons. We got our best score line
yet (8-12 – to the other team, but still, we’re normally 60-something down!). Moreover, my team and I started as Back to Netball-ers about a year ago, none of us having played netball for some years and not remembering what the heck a ‘chest pass’ was! We are now a fully-fledged netball squad, in a league, with proper netball dresses, and having just played our first summer league, we are now entering our first winter league! Hooray for us and a big hooray for the Back to Netball scheme!
As you’ve probably realised from the aforementioned typical score lines, this isn’t a fairy tale monumentous rise to the top of Oxfordshire netball. We lost most of our summer league games but that really isn’t the point! When I nervously went along to my first Back to Netball session in August 2012 I hadn’t played for nearly 15 years. I grabbed my sporty friend Gemma and I thought it would just be a laugh for us and I could reminisce about this school sport that I had almost completely forgotten about. What I didn’t expect was to still be going along to sessions 12 months later and to have met such a nice bunch of girls and for us all to be passionate about making this into a proper team.
School netball for me, and I imagine for many of us, was not particularly inspiring. I always found netball very ‘cliquey’ at school. I was quite sporty though and so despite not being in the ‘cool’ gang, I did get to play in one of the netball teams (a sub for the B team alas!). Our school wasn’t the most encouraging at sport and PE either so we didn’t get much of a go at it. Since then I have always wanted to join a team of some kind, to follow in the steps of my very sporty and talented hockey player sister! But I was never brave enough to join a team at uni or a local team after uni as everyone had always been playing since school and I felt massively out of my depth. But then at 29, I discovered Back to Netball!
At Back to Netball I have never once felt out of place or not good enough to be there. We have had an amazing coach, Paula, and it’s utterly thanks to her that we’ve got where we have. She’s been fab at coaxing us from being unconfident, sloppy ‘banana ball’ throwers (as she terms them!) to more accurate ‘ball side’ players (another fave phrase – you really gotta get with the lingo). She’s bought a great sense of humour and fun to all our sessions and I’d say that has played a huge part in keeping us all coming back every week. It’s never been like a PE lesson – we all just have a laugh every Tuesday night and get some great exercise whilst we’re at it!
Back to Netball in Oxford is run by the scheme, Active Women, part of Oxfordshire Sports Partnership. They do all sorts of activities to encourage women into sport. I think this is just great. It’s a shame that many women think they ‘can’t do’ sport, that they’re no good at it, or that it’s boring. And so it’s just these sorts of initiatives that we need. The ‘Back to’ scheme in general extends further than just netball as well. I searched for ‘Back to’ and came up with schemes for netball, hockey, badminton and swimming. My mum went along to a 6 week Back to Hockey group having not picked up a hockey stick for some 15 years. (My sister did do the coaching for that but I’m pretty sure she didn’t give any mum-preferential treatment!).
Anyway, I personally think this is a GREAT scheme and am really proud of how far we have come as a team. It really just shows that you can learn or re-learn a sport, whatever age you are or background you come from, and there’s actually an immense amount of fun to be had in the process!
To read more about our teammate Louise, check out her blog!
Last weekend I played a netball match with my team. This is exciting for several reasons. We got our best score line
yet (8-12 – to the other team, but still, we’re normally 60-something down!). Moreover, my team and I started as Back to Netball-ers about a year ago, none of us having played netball for some years and not remembering what the heck a ‘chest pass’ was! We are now a fully-fledged netball squad, in a league, with proper netball dresses, and having just played our first summer league, we are now entering our first winter league! Hooray for us and a big hooray for the Back to Netball scheme!
As you’ve probably realised from the aforementioned typical score lines, this isn’t a fairy tale monumentous rise to the top of Oxfordshire netball. We lost most of our summer league games but that really isn’t the point! When I nervously went along to my first Back to Netball session in August 2012 I hadn’t played for nearly 15 years. I grabbed my sporty friend Gemma and I thought it would just be a laugh for us and I could reminisce about this school sport that I had almost completely forgotten about. What I didn’t expect was to still be going along to sessions 12 months later and to have met such a nice bunch of girls and for us all to be passionate about making this into a proper team.
School netball for me, and I imagine for many of us, was not particularly inspiring. I always found netball very ‘cliquey’ at school. I was quite sporty though and so despite not being in the ‘cool’ gang, I did get to play in one of the netball teams (a sub for the B team alas!). Our school wasn’t the most encouraging at sport and PE either so we didn’t get much of a go at it. Since then I have always wanted to join a team of some kind, to follow in the steps of my very sporty and talented hockey player sister! But I was never brave enough to join a team at uni or a local team after uni as everyone had always been playing since school and I felt massively out of my depth. But then at 29, I discovered Back to Netball!
At Back to Netball I have never once felt out of place or not good enough to be there. We have had an amazing coach, Paula, and it’s utterly thanks to her that we’ve got where we have. She’s been fab at coaxing us from being unconfident, sloppy ‘banana ball’ throwers (as she terms them!) to more accurate ‘ball side’ players (another fave phrase – you really gotta get with the lingo). She’s bought a great sense of humour and fun to all our sessions and I’d say that has played a huge part in keeping us all coming back every week. It’s never been like a PE lesson – we all just have a laugh every Tuesday night and get some great exercise whilst we’re at it!
Back to Netball in Oxford is run by the scheme, Active Women, part of Oxfordshire Sports Partnership. They do all sorts of activities to encourage women into sport. I think this is just great. It’s a shame that many women think they ‘can’t do’ sport, that they’re no good at it, or that it’s boring. And so it’s just these sorts of initiatives that we need. The ‘Back to’ scheme in general extends further than just netball as well. I searched for ‘Back to’ and came up with schemes for netball, hockey, badminton and swimming. My mum went along to a 6 week Back to Hockey group having not picked up a hockey stick for some 15 years. (My sister did do the coaching for that but I’m pretty sure she didn’t give any mum-preferential treatment!).
Anyway, I personally think this is a GREAT scheme and am really proud of how far we have come as a team. It really just shows that you can learn or re-learn a sport, whatever age you are or background you come from, and there’s actually an immense amount of fun to be had in the process!
To read more about our teammate Louise, check out her blog!