Eaton Netball Association wins NetSetGo Centre of the Year award

A small South West netball association has become the talk of the town after winning a State award for one of its junior programs.

Eaton Netball Association was named Netball WA’s NetSetGo Centre of the Year, with a number of its young players given the opportunity to collect the trophy during the 2023 WANL grand finals last month.

ENA executive committee member Tamara Irwin said the association was surprised to receive the award as a small sporting organisation in the South West.

“Our NetSetGo competition is quite limited in numbers as well as our association so we were so surprised that we were not only nominated, but to win the award,” she said.

“Every association was nominated but you had to get votes from your participants to be considered.

“The fact that parents actually took time out of their day to write the comments they wrote was very touching and it really gave us a boost because we’ve got new committee members this year and we’ve come in with a renewed sense of ‘we’ve got this’ and to have that backing and to have people saying we’re doing a great job was very touching.”

NetSetGo is Australia’s official starter program for girls and boys aged five to 10, providing a chance for kids to learn the netball basics.

The program features three age-based programs — Net for 5-6-year-olds to learn fundamental motor skills through activities and games, Set for 7-8-year-olds focussing on refining fundamental motor skills and introducing modified match play, and Go for 9-10-year-olds focussing on developing specific skills through modified match play.

Since being established in 2005, the Eaton Netball Association has been running its Net Set Go program alongside its regular association competitions.

The association has 25 teams in the Net program, eight teams in the Set program and seven teams in the Go program.

Ms Irwin said in addition to providing the NetSetGo program, the Eaton Netball Association prides itself on developing its players all the way through to high school by offering training sessions and workshops to help players build confidence.

She said the association was community-based, having recently held its annual Pink Day fundraiser, raising money for breast cancer research.

“It’s a huge day for the association and for the community and all the money raised went straight to the Breast Cancer Network,” she said.

“This year was our record year — we raised $2000 in one day and that was contributions from the NetSetGo community, contributions from the Eaton Recreation Centre where we run our comps as well as through the commitment of the committee.”