Forty-four netball coaches turned up for the two-day Americas Netball coaching seminar at UWI Mona Campus on Thursday and Friday under the tutelage of three of netball’s best coaches.
The big-three coaches were led by Jill McIntosh, former national coach of Australia and Jamaica and member of World Netball Coaching panel; Sue Hawkins, national coach of New Zealand and Rob Wright out of Australia.
Thirty of the coaches are Jamaicans while the other 14 are drawn from other countries in the Americas region.
McIntosh said that staging the seminar was very good for the region and will redound to its growth and development of the sport.
”We have coaches who will be participating in the qualifier and other coaches as well as about 30 coaches from Jamaica. We are trying to upskill them in all the different skills of netball and find different ways to keep their minds open. We are covering shooting, the mid-court and center passes and some specific center pass attack, some specific center pass defense, feeding how they feed. We are covering defending, all the principles on defending.”
She said that “the coaches have been great. They have been interactive. They have gone out and participated. The questioning has been good and we have got lots of talk and chatter and its around about what they see and how they can change it and how they can progress it, so the chatter is good.”
McIntosh also said “my observation of the region is that they have wonderful athletes, so we need to upskill the coaches to show them many ways of doing the same thing, and from a purely Jamaica perspective I have seen the girls grow and what I saw at the Commonwealth Games, I was so heartened and pleased, they did such an amazing job.”
