After retiring from professional netball, former Sunshine Girl Nicole Aiken-Pinnock could have easily walked away from the sport. Instead, she ventured into a different aspect of the game by becoming a coach.

The 37-year-old Aiken-Pinnock, who started playing international representative netball in 2004, made her senior debut for the Jamaica national team at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. She retired in 2018.

The six-foot, two-inch tall former Sunshine Girls captain said she is using her coaching role at Moneague College to give back to the sport she loves.

“I always say I am not a big lover of coaching because I think it takes more out of you than actually playing, but I am also seeing who I was in netball and what I can contribute to the development of the sport here in Jamaica,” said Aiken-Pinnock, who is a lecturer at Moneague College..

“I recognised that I do have the ability to do that, and so I am contributing to my institution’s programme in the best possible way that I can, so that we can be an institution that is recognised when it comes to netball and people will actually give us the respect that we need or deserve,” she said.

Aiken-Pinnock, who is also the director of sports at the institution, said that while it has been a rocky road for her, she is now realising her potential as a netball coach.

“My team has been doing well at the moment. When I started working at Moneague in 2015, I was coaching the netball team there and, to be honest, we did not even win one game,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“I said to my principal, ‘Sir, if we are going to do well in netball, you would have to cut me some slack; you would have to give me the opportunity to bring in some talents’. Not necessarily the superstars, but some talents that can be coached so that we can be on that map.

“That he afforded me, and funny enough, we have been doing exceptionally well since 2015; we have won the junior title; we went in the grand finale of the intermediate B; and then last season, we actually won the intermediate A title. So things are looking good, and I happy,” Aiken-Pinnock said.

While Aiken-Pinnock and her team are in high spirits, she said that there is no time for celebration as more work has to be done if they are to continue to improve as a unit.

“So I think we are on the rise, and we are doing well. We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re getting there; it is just baby steps, one step at a time; one season at a time; that’s how I look at it. I think that there’s more work to be done.

“Yes, I do feel proud of my accomplishments, but I also think that there is a lot of work to be done where netball is concerned right across the country, and so we can only give back in the best way that we can in our small space, but it still requires a lot of work,” said Aiken-Pinnock, who had captained the Sunshine Girls to bronze at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.