Spar Proteas star Karla Pretorius says competitions like the DSTV Schools Netball Challenge (DSNC) are key to creating strong national teams. Hoërskool Florida in Roodepoort will host the fourth annual competition which will see schools from around the country fight for the coveted title of the best netball team in the Under-19 division.
The DSNC has seen several graduates go on to represent South Africa in various competitions including the Netball World Youth Cup Africa qualifiers and the Commonwealth Youth Games that took place on the Islands of Trinidad and Tobago last August. In the squad of 12 players that took the gold medal at the qualifiers and made the list to next year’s Netball World Youth Cup in Gibraltar nine of them were former DSNC players from different schools from various provinces.
Sanmarie Visser, who played for Hoërskool Duineveld in the inaugural year of t DSNC, has now graduated to the senior team as one of the training partners for the Proteas.
Pretorius says the standard of competition keeps getting better when schools play regularly in these tournaments.
“When coming from leagues in the districts and coming here it is a notch up. I think the standard is quite good. For a team to grow, it doesn’t matter how much you train but if you don’t play, that does not lead to improvement. It is very nice to see the standard going up again,” says Pretorius.
The DSNC is divided into two streams, Botho and Ubuntu, which offer the same platform for schools in urban and rural areas to experience the sport on the same level. Over 2 800 schools from all the nine provinces in the country registered for this year’s competition and 48 have qualified for the national finals on 12 to 13 July.
The goal defence says she hopes the competition will grow bigger for more schools to take part.
“It would be nice to see the standard continue increasing and being more competitive. Seeing more schools over a few days from the district and provincial level would bring out the competitiveness in all the team and that would lead to the discovery of more players,” she says.