Upgrade equipment and kit for walking netball sessions at Torbay Lesiure Centre

The Pitch

Problem statement

England Netball, our governing body, have made strong links with the Women's Institute and this has confirmed there is a need for social, walking netball groups. These sessions are open to anyone for whom they are suitable, primarily older females for whom normal netball would not be appropriate / accessible. Dart Netball started delivering a weekly session of walking netball in January 2023. Having been running the sessions for 16 months and establishing the group we need to replace inadequate and unsafe equipment and provide more training kit and equipment for the walking netball players at Torbay Leisure Centre ( TQ4 5JR).

Solution

We deliver a one hour walking netball session weekly across 45 weeks. We aim for this to be enjoyable as well as active for the players. We have taken 30 inactive ladies into our programme, our eldest participant is 84. A number of our ladies are retired and live alone. We wish to replace wobbly and unsafe netball posts with new netball posts. We wish to provide new posts with netball post protectors for the safety of the players. Bibs will clearly show teams by the bib colour and have clear player positions on the bibs to aid both teams and umpires during match play. 10 training balls will enable a more interactive and enjoyable session for all participants.

Why are we best placed to deliver?

A Dart Netball Level 2 Coach has completed her " Walking Netball Host" training. This coach was awarded England Netball Coach of the Year 2023/4 for Children and Young People and is very keen to work with this new group. Our players have heard about sessions through links with WI, advertising in local libraries, Torbay Leisure Centre, GP surgeries, physiotherapy clinics, social media platforms, lunch clubs and word of mouth. We have had funding from Torbay Council to assist with running costs whilst we get this programme up and running. However, we need help to fund this new spend for equipment and kit.

Focus Areas

Delivery plan

Budget breakdown

Beneficiaries

132 people

Who will benefit

Expected impact

We offer taster sessions initially and then a small fee of £5 per session. if there were anyone who would be prevented from attending by reason the of the fee then the club would support their continued participation. As well as helping them to become more active the group has provided a social network / support. Our core group of ladies got together for a Christmas meal. If numbers increased sufficiently , we could look at putting on a second session in the morning. We have trained other Dart NC coaches as Walking Netball Hosts, so that we can cover holiday and sickness. Upgrading the posts will also benefit wider netball community - Torbay Netball League (which is predominantly Ladies (18+) League ) use Torbay Leisure Centre two or three times a year for tournaments with the current wobbly, unsafe posts! These tournaments typically have 100 participants.

Track record

We are very active fundraisers : in the last year 1/3 money raised came from the private and public sector sponsorship and 2/3 from club members. Especially, club members raised £5019 to put towards taking 100 girls and 10 teams to a weekend netball tournament in Somerset and £2701 crowdfunding to draw out and equip a new full sized netball court at Torbay Leisure Centre. For Walking Netball we initially started with around 10 and built up to 20 members by June 2023 on the register, but not everyone attends every week. Over the summer we struggled due to holidays and other commitments. Since summer we have added another 10 members some regular and some ad hoc. We hope that ladies joining us temporarily from Teignmouth will help with numbers during the summer months in 2024. Torbay Council Back to Sport Fund in 2022 and 2023 has supported us with costs for coaches and court hire. We aim to be able to cover the running costs for walking netball by then end of the 2024/5 season.

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