BOARD CHAIR & GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa Greetings, greetings, greetings to you all. It has been a unique year, worldwide, nationally and for our community with Covid19. Following an incredible amount of support from our netball family and a lot of hard work, Netball in Taranaki happened. It is easy to forget the projects completed and accomplishments to celebrate when we all endured a challenging 2020. The year started off quickly with Summer League Competition’s, Preparing for Reps Programmes, completion of the much welcomed and deserved Waiwhakaiho Tower upgrade, and preparation for the regular Winter Competition when we were sent into the unknown of a National Covid19 lockdown. The resilience of our staff and netball community was obvious when we had to rethink and reshape how we provide netball competitions, development opportunities, safely participate, and have positive experiences in a changing environment that was participant focused and compliant. Several changes were made including a shortened 10-week season, alterations to regulations, cancellation of the Major Awards and the North Island Junior Championships but we were happy to be back on court. Online learning quickly became the ‘normal’ and despite the difficulties with face-to-face courses and workshops we were still able to provide education, development and a place for coaches, umpires, managers, and officials to share and learn. A highlight for 2020 was gifting 250 netballs in the ‘Balls for Bubbles’ giveaway to enable some of our young members to practice at home during Covid19 lockdown and we extended our online audience with new online coaching programmes to Mother Earth futureFerns and other aspiring young netballers. We celebrated diversification in 2020 with the inclusion of males in our Premier Competition and the Taranaki Invitational Tournament. The inclusion of male netballers and supporting their pathway received National attention and support from the Netball community who are finding ways to improve their offerings for males and print media and tv helped tell our story. Following on from Parengaio Huhu Netball NZ National Award win we launched Bilingual Umpiring and encourage the use of Te Reo, it has been included on our venue signs, in our introductory umpire workshops/courses and print material is available to further learning. We are proud to initiate these improvements and inspire others to use Te Reo as part of our sport. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the players, officials, volunteers, parents, supporters, and seasonal staff who have given up their time to contribute to the strength of netball. Thank you to our major funders NZCT and TSBCT for continuing to support Netball Taranaki and provide is with the platform to deliver netball to our Region and we extend our appreciation to our family of sponsors, funders, local businesses, and corporate supporters. Returning to netball and successfully managing our community back to sport during Covid19 would not have been possible without their incredible help and understanding.
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