Wiltshire County Netball Performance Pathway Report June 2016

WILTSHIRE COUNTY NETBALL PERFORMANCE PATHWAY REPORT JUNE 2016

Performance Pathway

For those of you not familiar with the pathway let me explain what it involves. Wiltshire Netball in partnership with England Netball agreed that we would run 2 Satellite academies and a County Academy for the 2015/2016seasons. The Satellite’s are the first step on the performance Pathway. The Pathway has 5 stages culminating with the top being National Academy and Intensive Netball Training Centre. The pathway is accessible at various stages to athletes using a scouting and screening process.

Trials

This season we are ran some very successful trials, which were attended, by least 180 girls or more. We ran 2 Satellites in Warminster and Swindon. Each Satellite selected 20 girls from the trials to attend a 20-week training program. The U16 County Academy selected 20 athletes from the trials to attend a 30-week training program. The successful athletes embark on a training plan put together by England Netball to develop their individual skill base, it is mostly skill base sessions with the girls getting their competitive play from their club environment. The pathway is a fluid pathway with movement of athletes through the various levels both joining and leaving the

Pathway.

We also had some scouts attend the County Schools Finals and Wiltshire School Games where they were able to identify athletes to attend the Wiltshire Netball trials at the end of the month.

Players

This year 5 of our athletes had the opportunity to train with the Regional Academy during the season. Two Players were successful in being offered a place at Bath and Gloucester Academies.We have also had players move from Satellite into County Academy and we have successfully scouted players into the programat both County and Satellite level during the season. These were put forward by their club coaches. We have run an U12/U13 Development squad who had 7 sessions of training. It wasn’t the same players invited to every session, and their junior club coaches nominated the players. The idea was to show the girls what is expected of them on a skill level basis should they decide to attend Satellite trials in the future.

We currently have 3 players at Regional Performance Academy Shona O’Dwyer Sarah Angell and Kirsty Harris. 6 players at Regional Academy, trainingout of Bath and Gloucester Centers. In addition to this 3 of our County athletes have been selected to attend Regional Academy trials during half term.

Congratulations to Shona O’Dwyer Croft NC/Wiltshire girl who was selected to attend England National U19 screening in August. Shona now plays her netball with Hucclecote. Also Kirsty Harris who recently won the Endeavour award at the Team Bath National Performance League Awards.

Satellite & County Trials

We are also holding our County and Satellite Screening and trials on the following dates

Sunday 19th June- Screening Day

Saturday 25th June -Invited Trials

Sunday 3rd July – Invited Trials

We have changed the format this year and all athletes in the programme will be invited to attend both our trial dates. We have also scouted some players and invited them straight to trials. Any new athlete being nominated by Schools or clubs will attend the screening day on Sunday 19th June, and successful athletes from the screening day will be invited to the trial dates.

We welcomed 5 new coaches in to the pathway, they had all recently qualified as level 2 coaches and had had assistance from the county towards their course so initially were paying back their hours, but have joined as assistants to our lead coaches.

We welcomed some coaches to watch some of our sessions at both Warminster and Swindon Satellite.

We were lucky that Warminster assistant coach was this year an ex England U18 and Manchester Thunder player who brought some great strength, and agility ideas to the girls, and she was able to share her journey through the pathway with all our athletes who attended the county Training day in February.

As well as our own County training day in February a few of our athletes attended a tri training day with Gloucester and Avon in October. Our satellite coaches also attended and helped in the delivery of the day

Future Developments

We are looking at using 5 Sundays this season as training days where all our performance pathway players will train. Planning is in early stages but we are hoping to use some of these dates as education days, covering things like nutrition, injury prevention, and also match play with other South West Academies.

We also want to form greater links with our club coaches who coach juniors so we can encourage development of all our junior players in the county and not just those in the pathway. This may involve running coaching workshops at some of our training sessions, so watch this space.

Tracy Watt

County Performance Lead