‘UP FOR IT!’
Nicole Aiken-Pinnock, co-coach of Jamaica’s senior netball team for the 2023 Netball Fast5 World Series, believes the Sunshine Girls will have a successful championship next month.
The Fast5 Netball World Series 2023 is to be staged from November 11 to 12 at Wolfbrook Arena in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The world’s six most experienced Fast5 women’s teams — New Zealand, Australia, England, Jamaica, South Africa, and Malawi — are to compete at the event.
The Sunshine Girls, guided by Coach Connie Francis, won bronze at the recent Netball World Cup in South Africa. They finished fifth at the Fast5 World Series last year.
Aiken-Pinnock, who is working alongside fellow Coach Shawn Murdock, said the Sunshine Girls will be in capable hands.
“Having another stint as senior team coach will definitely be a challenge, but we are up for it,” Aiken-Pinnock, who guided the Sunshine Girls to gold at the 2023 Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games, told the Jamaica Observer.
“We’re putting in a lot of effort. I believe Shawn and I understand what is required, and we are putting in as much work behind the scenes as we can because the preparation time is limited. But we’re not spending time discussing it because we want to make sure we’re giving it our all each session.
“We are also challenging the ladies just by being better than they were the session before. Not focusing on what we can’t control but focusing on what we can move forward. We are doing what we need to do,” the former player of the game said.
Aiken-Pinnock, who was co-coach along with Phyllis Thompson at the CAC Games, said the idea is to keep working with Murdock and making sure the goal is met.
“We definitely share the workload as much as we can in terms of the plans and the preparations for what we need to do at every training session and it has been going well. There’s nothing to complain about and so we have to keep doing what we know we need to do for us to compete or be at our best at the Fast5 championship.
“At times in sessions we do have a split where he would spend more time at the attacking end and I will spend more time at the defensive end of the court. We are not set, we do a lot of rotation and we just work together well. We know what the focus is, we know what the plan is, we know what the goals are, and we know that we have objectives to meet.”
Aiken-Pinnock stated that while the Sunshine Girls’ preparation time for the competition is quite short, the players have responded positively to the training sessions.
“Training has been pretty intense. But knowing that during the time frame that we have to be working with, we have to commend the efforts of what the ladies are doing. We are always going to be pushing them.
“It is not easy but we are not complaining, we are just doing the work. I know that there are a lot of expectations of us, and to be honest, I am not trying to over think that too much. It can bring you to a state where you probably become overwhelmed or be focusing on the wrong thing.
“I know what we have in our hands, and for us, we are just going out there to give of our best and our best is definitely trying to ensure that we finish on the podium. I am proud of [what] the ladies are offering now and we just want to continue to build on that,” the former Jamaica netball captain affirmed.
Aiken-Pinnock stated that given the group of players she is working with, the best 10 will be chosen to represent the country.
“This is a squad that has been training at the moment but we can only 10 players to Fast5. It is a shorter version of the game, it requires so much more in terms of concentration, focus and discipline. We do have [fewer] players going into the tournament and so at the end of the day, we just have to try [our] best,” she explained.
