Barbados ended with a bronze medal in netball at the inaugural Caribbean Games hosted by Guadeloupe in 2022. The national team won the World Youth Netball Championships 2025 Qualifiers earlier this year. And the young Gems are three-time defending champions at the Jean Pierre Caribbean Under-16 Netball Championships.
Now plans are afoot to build on those successes.
The Barbados Netball Association (BNA) is laying the foundation for the future success of national teams at all levels, with the rollout of a development pathway for Under-14 athletes. The plan is currently underway in five parishes.
School netball is now underway, but some of the youngsters competing under the banners of their various learning institutions are also involved or going to be involved in the U14 Development Pathway and Community Development Programme.
The two-pronged approach is intended to prepare a skilled group of netballers for future excellence at the world level. The BNA says that whereas national youth teams are enjoying success regionally, the goal is to craft exceptional players and exceptional teams.
“And therefore we feel that if we try to instil specific skills from an earlier age and work with those persons both at the school level and at the community level, then we can build a cadre of athletes that can follow the pathway right through to the seniors,” said Dr Carmeta Douglin, BNA president. “Because right now we need to rebuild younger seniors going forward, so that is part of the plan.
“Unfortunately you would have dropouts along the way. But we’re hoping that by keeping them in a squad that we can retain them and letting them move up the the squads, as you see in Australia and some of the other countries that have an academy, where they would move from Under-14 to Under-16 to Under-19 then to Under-21 to move into seniors. So you have a platform for them to move through.”
The Development Pathway, funded by World Netball, includes players selected as the best U14 players from their clubs, coming out of the first ever U14 division during the national netball tournament this year.
The first cohort comprises 40 young athletes, who are initially in training for 10 weeks. The group trains twice a week, Mondays 4:30-6 p.m. and Saturdays 7-9 a.m., with two senior national netballers who are also trained coaches, Akeena Stoute and Teresa Howell. Andrea Kirton is the programme coordinator. The youngsters will be kept in the pathway to keep improving and moving up the ladder.
The second facet of the plan is to mobilise young players through National Sports Council (NSC) Community Development Funding. Parishes that play little or no netball were selected to participate in the program: St John; St Andrew; St Thomas; St Joseph; and St Philip.
Each venue has a coordinator and coaches. Again, the programme is meant to run for 10 weeks, with talent identification and training underway in three parishes. The other two are meant to start training before month-end.
The best players from these communities will then be selected to join the pathway. Communities will also be encouraged to work with these young players so that they can continue to represent their parishes, build better netballers, and strong teams to help grow netball in Barbados.
Part of the development plan is to target the ongoing school tournaments for discerning and grooming young prospects. Dr Douglin explained that whereas the sport has an independent governance structure for play in schools, there is a significant amount of dialogue and cooperation, based on the mutual goals of the two organisations.
“The Barbados Secondary Schools League are actually affiliated with the Barbados Netball Association, so they keep us in the loop,” noted the netball head. “We don’t try to interfere in any way, but we’re very respectful that they’re organising competitions. Currently there is an Under-13 and Under-19 competition that has started on Thursday.
“And they’ve informed us and invited us to look at the participants, et cetera, so we can easily pull persons from that competition. And coming out of the Barbados Secondary Schools, too, they would have recommended some of those Under-14 young players to be part of our pathway as well. So we work very closely with them, and we are seeing a lot of potential coming out of the schools’ programme.”
After winning the Jean Pierre Caribbean Under-16 Netball Championships three years in a row, coming out of the COVID pandemic, Barbados is looking forward to hosting the regional youth showcase in April 2025.
(TF)
