Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association’s (ISSA) chairperson for netball Erica Ewbanks says playing the sport at the high school level is the foundation for building and developing the future stars of the game.

During the recent All-Island Netball Under-16 and Under-19 Championships held at Manchester High School, Ewbanks told the Jamaica Observer that this level of competition is the platform for their (the netballers’) development.

“We’re just happy that we were able to return to some sort of normality, and so the ISSA netball competition ran its course this year, and we culminated with the All-Island championships. I think it is the foundation,” Ewbanks said.

“It is from this that we get our Sunshine Girls and other development leagues in Jamaica, so this is the foundation, and I think we should have more people investing in the youth, especially in netball,” the Garvey Maceo High School principal added.

Ewbanks said the sport of netball has a number of physical and mental benefits that do wonders for its players.

“For netball, I think it takes a lot of training; it encompasses responsibility; it involves the development of the skill itself; it involves sportsmanship; and I think the ladies are better for it because they learn tolerance and patience.”

“It’s not just about winning at all costs; it’s about mind training and ended up being a team sport; you know that no one individual can make a team, and so I think that will help with the overall development of the girls who play netball,” Ewbanks explained.

Ewbanks stated that in order for the sport of netball to grow, the game needs sponsorship, and she is calling on the local government to lend a helping hand.

“One thing that we really need — and I am sure all my colleagues, the president of ISSA, the Vice-President Colleen Montague — is sponsorship. We don’t see the kind of sponsorship that we really need, and it is not just at ISSA and netball, it is about netball in Jamaica.

“Even though now we have some support for sponsorship for netball at the national level, we still think more schools could do better with the support, and for me, I am just calling on the Government because it is not just about academics and we see so many of our sports personnel making it and getting scholarships and going off to better themselves.

“You cannot have students coming into schools with talents, and we don’t enhance them as we are now; we don’t get support from the Government; schools have to forge their own way; past students pour into the schools, and so we are appealing, speaking on behalf of ISSA, for other corporate bodies to come on board and support high school netball,” Ewbanks urged.

— Ruddy Allen