My netball dream is...
Hukerenui School is a rural school approximately 30kms north of Whangarei, catering for 150 students from year 1 to 8. This is our third season of providing netball for our community. We have five teams; a year 1/2, two year 3/4, a year 5/6 and year 7/8 team.
When we put a call out to our community to see if there was interest in netball we were overwhelmed with the response. At the time we started our school had 100 students and 40 of them wanted to play netball. We started off in season one getting 40 playing uniforms with the boys wearing our school rugby jumpers. As the school roll increased to 150 students we have been making do with the equipment we started with, especially balls.
This makes practice at times challenging with teams having to share balls amongst themselves or parents bring balls from home. Having an ANZ grant would help our girls immensely with having the right sized ball and enough balls to train effectively. This would bring a new element of fun into training as we would be able to incorporate different training games.
Netball has been a big hit in our community with girls and boys and we have people involved in our teams who attend neighbouring schools this all adds a community feel to our training nights. We are fortunate enough to have supportive parents with each team having several mums, auntys and dads helping out.
While new gear is not the only ingredient to a happy successful team/club environment it certainly helps with the girls and boys sense of pride knowing they 'look the part' and aren't reliant on other clubs to provide the ball on game day.
We believe we have a wonderful inclusive culture at Hukerenui netball catering for all ages and genders while providing opportunities for caregivers and wider whanau members to be involved. Having an ANZ grant would be the icing on the cake for this talented, dedicated community. We invite you to come into our club to experience this for yourselves!
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If you, your team, club or school need ANZ's help to bring your netball dreams to life then apply here