A day at the netball

Community netball courts are hostile environments, but as Christopher O’Leary reports, they are also the field of the dreams.

Sign says it - Go Arrows Photo courtesy of Christopher O'Leary

My sister Stephanie has been a bit quiet this week. Known for her outbursts of mindless laughter, shopping and love of anything Australian Idol, she has had something to worry about last Saturday morning. It was not over missing her favourite cartoon, or that she had a dreaded doctors appointment.

She has a date with destiny, as her netball team made a grand final.

Like kids across Australia at this time of the year, netball seasons were being completed with teams facing off in season deciders. Her under 11’s side was one of those teams, and she had every reason to find herself beside herself.

The idea of playing in a grand final is a frightening prospect in any sport, at any level and for anyone. Kids are filled up with hopes and fraught with fear over uncertain and uncontrollable factors which either leaves them shouting for joy or hiding under a rock for eternity.

Steph’s desire to win has been painfully obvious this week, as she has started to bite her nails lately and she knows all of her relatives are coming to support the assault. So for her sake, and that I always love seeing parents claw each other’s eyes out at these shindigs, I throw some clothes on my seedy sorry corpse and rush out for a spot of netball.

The early sun gives the Dingley Netball Courts in Melbourne’s southeast an eerie touch. That feeling turns to mass hysteria when I saw congregations of families, coaches and officials huddled around the bitumen courts. While it does not garner as much attention as boy ball sports such as football or cricket, netball stirs as much passion in Australians every week at this time.

Liz Ellis and Sharelle McMahon are nowhere to be seen but girls in shirts and skirts of all colours warm up by running along the courts, with fathers trying to inspire their daughters by spitting out passionate rhetoric they picked up from their own sporting feats. Little kids, suffering from lack of attention, and hung over teenagers, suffering from lack of hydration, treat their woes with a can of soft drink from the kiosk.

Meanwhile gossip between mothers – dressed in trendy coats, their hair covered with tips and armed with camcorders to capture history – is in progress, albeit if those conversations about television shows or match tactics began days before.

Netball courts make Baghdad look like war zone 101. One day prime ministers will be forced to call in the Defence Force to quell mass riots started by parents irate with referees penalizing their kids, or with coaches, who are normally teenage girls from the club hoaxed into the hazardous job, that do not give them enough match time.

My sister greets her team, the Aspendale Arrows, as my mother rushes to her friends to get the low down. The team features two members of ‘squad’ (a term that is referred to as if the girls are part of some secret society) but today they have suffered a blow as one girl, who is tall and skilled, has got a bout of gastro and cannot play.

Mum felt sorry for the kid and is instantly gutted at the late exclusion. She watches out for any signs of worry from Steph, but it is hard to tell what is ever going on in my sister’s mind, other than her love of olives and Kath and Kim.

Her team has played and beaten their opposition before, but a grand final always presents a different situation where the impossible and downright weird can transpire.

The umpires officiating on the match, with socks pulled up to their knees and who should have stopped wearing short skirts decades ago, arrive at the court as the girls finish warming up. Both teams line up in their positions and wait for the siren, which resembles blowers that signal outbreaks of world war, to bring the match to life.

The game is under way and the opposition get the early advantage by forcing the Arrows to lose possession early and to be caught stepping, making the biased crowd liken umpires to field marshals because they bark orders at players. They were consistent but they often got under Steph’s skin, my sister shooting poisonous glances at one referee when she penalized her on more than one occasion. Steph is passionate and not known for bottling her emotions, so her regularly venting frustration sent me into bursts of laughter.

I strike a conversation with a parent of Steph’s teammates, who said he had to stop his daughter from practicing because she was sending herself into a panic attack. The night before she took 60 shots for goal in her backyard, but 50 of them went in.

That form continued on today, as she hardly missed in the goal square for the first half, getting the Arrows out to a three-goal lead. The Arrows were beginning to show some form because they were accurate and had plenty of uncontested possessions centre court.

The opposition came back in the second half, so calls of the game being in the bag were shut down instantly by nervous parents. The conversions and skill dried up slightly for the Arrows, as that three-goal deficit was whittled down to one in the final quarter.

It was tight, and I must admit to feeling some nerves as the siren refused to sound. Panicking parents began to cheer louder as the ball often hung above the opposition’s ring.

People were holding their breath, and in the distance you could hear nearby traffic.

Then relief.

The siren did sound and the girls did hang on, screaming in delight as they realised the match was theirs. They all hugged each other, shook the hand of the opposition and ran to the safety of their family.

We were all really proud of Steph, whose performance in defence would make Brisbane Lions defender Mal Michael nod his head in respect, and we were happy that the nerves were over and that she could enjoy this moment with her mates. But, more importantly, I was glad that we got out of there relatively unscathed, as they breed them tough at the netball courts.

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