Tara Murray
The Sunbury Lions are focused on trying to rebuild their netball program after making the decision to field just three sides in the Ballarat Netball League season.
The Lions have withdrawn A-grade side due to losing a number of players in the off season. The club won’t have a C-grade or E-grade side either.
Lions president Jack Medcraft confirmed that the club had withdrawn the top two sides.
“At this stage we don’t have one,” he said of A-grade side.
“We’re not the only club having trouble fielding teams. We will have to wait and see how things play out.
“We’ll just keep plugging away.”
Melton has also withdrawn their A-grade team and will field just three teams.
In A-grade there will be three byes each week, with the fixture staying the same so the rest of the matches across netball and football.
Medcraft said they were still looking for players and encouraging anyone who wanted to play netball to come down and train.
The club is offering free membership to netball players along with the Netball Victoria registration fee to be paid by the club.
Medcraft said it wasn’t all doom and gloom, with the club recently appointing a new netball coaching panel.
Stacey West, who is Netball Australia’s executive general manager of performance, has joined the club as a coach. Janine Hodgson will again coach the under-19s, while Kelly Mackie-Wood is also part of the netball coaching panel.
Tami Hardwick is again netball coaching director.
West previously told Star Weekly the focus this season was building back up the netball program that they can build on in the future.
“I’m passionate about netball and community netball. It’s nice to get back to grassroots netball.
“They’ve been really open to the suggestion around some of the changes about building the netball back up.
The BNL competition was set to get underway on Saturday.
