Former Spar Proteas captain Zanele Mdodana is glad to be living her dream of planting the seed for the love of netball for the next generation.
Mdodana and former Limpopo Baobabs captain, Nthabiseng Mothutsi have been based in Saudi Arabia for almost three months where they have been working with schools to teach the basics of the sport.
The Saudi Netball Federation is looking to introduce the sport at the grassroots level in the hope of making netball one of the big sports in the country by getting more women and girls from the country to take part in the sport.
The move to having the pair lead the training programme is more so important as Saudi Arabia has been selected to host the 2024 Asian Women’s Netball Championship for the first time since its inception in 1985.
Mdodana says this opportunity was too good to pass up. The programme also included a coaching course and saw schools from Sri Lanka and Pakistan taking part in the training progamme. She says the chance also gave her time to cool off and get away from the rat race.
“We are working with the national federation. We have been visiting schools teaching them the fundamentals of the code because they don’t know anything about netball. They do have some sort of a national team but it is made up of expats, people who are working and they are from other countries. So they are trying to get the game to be played from the grassroots level and school level going up.
We have been working with coaches as well. We ran a couple of coaching courses, umpires, just assisting with the basic things when it comes to umpiring because I am not a qualified umpire. It has been amazing, it’s back to basics. Laying the foundation of what they are going to build on, and what they are going to move forward with.
"This has been a good thing for me, finding my health and going back to my running, just going to fetch myself in a way. It has been unbelievable. Just to quiet down, sit and think, reflect and look at where to from here for me,” says Mdodana.
NET BASICS
In 2014, Mdodana registered a foundation, Net Basics which is a mobile netball academy aimed at unearthing future stars from all parts of the Eastern Cape, especially the remote rural areas.
She says the opportunity to teach netball to Saudi and Sri Lankan school children has reignited the fire for her to continue the work she started with her foundation.
“This is something I would desperately want to do at home. As much as netball is established in our country, there are so many areas where our kids are taught the wrong thing.
It’s someone like me who needs to go in there and make sure the right standard and quality of netball is being taught to our children. So that when they are older, we don’t have to go back and change their bad habits,” she says.
Mdodana’s resignation announcement from Stellenbosch University came as a surprise. She had spent seven years with the institution and through her guidance, she led the team to its first Varsity Netball title, back-to-back USSA titles, and in the process produced two Spar Protea players in Nichole Taljaard and Nicola Smith.
Mdodana says she had achieved all she had planned with the Maroon Machine and it was time to move on.
“I know my resignation from Maties came as a shocker for a lot of people and everybody is looking for what happened.
I spent seven years there, and I invested all that I am in that programme. I got Maties to be where it is and the decision to go to Maties was my objective and I wanted to prove that I could do this thing. That someone who looks like me can be successful in that environment and in that space.
I had nothing more to prove, I had done that.
I have left a legacy and put them in a position that whoever comes can take it to the next level. Initially, it was all about me, what my goals were, and what I wanted to prove to myself. Moving out of the playing space into the coaching space and as a black coach in South Africa, excellence is not necessarily associated with us.
When I went to Maties people were asking why and how would I survive and just because people were saying I couldn’t I was going to show them and myself that I could. Now I don’t have to prove my worth anymore,” she explains.
However, Mdodana has not closed the door to coaching forever. She harbours ambitions of coaching in the national setup. Her current main goal is to see her son, Zukolwethu through high school and be a present parent to experience her son’s achievements.
“I am a single parent, I have got a child who is in boarding school in the Eastern Cape and I was missing so much on my child’s development. Everything that he would be doing so well I would be informed by other parents or people would go watch and tell me ‘oh, your child is so good.’
As a mom, I am not there (to see it). My child has three years then he will be out of high school and now without my mom (who passed in 2021), my dad is old and Zuko needs his mom.
Now can I be closer to my kid? Wake up on a Saturday morning, drive to Grahamstown, be on the sideline watching him play,” she says.