2023 has been an outstanding season for Burnside Netball especially with the depth that is coming through.

We managed to play over 240 games with only one default. We played in sun, rain, wind and ice-cold temperatures. Teams have sorted themselves week after week and ensured that they have had full teams show up ready to play. Outstanding effort by all players, managers, parents and especially coaches! 

We represented ourselves well as the Burnside High School  Netball programme in both Wednesday and Saturday competitions with over 100 players, nine student umpires and six student coaches across 10 Wednesday teams and eight Saturday teams.

We started the season well, in the first round, winning the Christchurch Netball Centre Freemasons Spirit Award for showing sportsmanship, along with this prestigious award our netball programme was awarded ten new netballs.

This year we had the 9A team compete at the SISS Junior tournament in Christchurch. The first day started strong managing to secure a top 16 spot which has not happened in a number of years. Sadly, an injury to the already light numbered team meant they had to play the final two days of tournament with only eight players, making it very tough to gain momentum against the other top 16 teams. A lovely team with lots of enthusiasm and grit will see them do well next year in Year 10.

The Senior A team had eight changes to the team roster during the year as well as two injuries to key players the weeks leading into our SuperNet Reserve relegation game impacting our result and our retention of our place in the Wednesday competition. With a little help from our ex netball friends we did secure our Senior Reserve 1 seeding for 2024 in the CNC competition and will be looking to put out a solid and consistent 2024 season to push top 3 in B grade at the SISS tournament.

TOP FINISHERS

In our Wednesday comp we had three teams involved in finals with our 9B team taking out the Division 3 competition.
On Saturday we had outstanding last rounds to have five of the eight teams make semi-finals!
The 10A team knocked the 10B team out of finals contention and then went on to lose by only one in overtime! A thrilling final.

AWARDS

Most Improved

Year 9 - Seoyeon Kim
Year 10 - Freya Christie
Senior - Coco Pengelly

Player's Player

B Maddison Tranter

C Sarah Higham & Summer Hennig

17A Anahera Inns

17B Haya Romero

10A Meika Craig

10B Sophie Dixon

9A Venus Lau

9B Rachael Carey

9C Zoe Barlow and Paige Thompson

Most Valuable

A Lucinda Thompson-Quinn

B Lucia Shanks and Brooke McKee

C Sue Ozaki

17A Evie Townley

17B Haya Romero

10A Pippa MacNicol

10B Lizzie Howe

9A Chloe Lemon

9B Rachael Carey

9C Emily Shuter

Umpire Achievement Awards

Emily Stedman - Silver And Bronze Whistlers

Venus Lau - Gold Whistlers

Jess Escott - Zone Theory

Nikkie Wu - Platinum Whistlers plus CNC MIP Platinum Whistler

Outstanding Junior Shooter: Josh Van Amelsfort

Outstanding Senior Shooter: Evie Townley

Coaches Choice

A Jess Escott

B Lily Price

C Merrin Lloyd

17A Zedie Craig

17B Layla Reedy

10A Sabrina Zhang

10B Lanica Schnetler

9A Hollie Cresswell

9B Bellajean Simmons

9C Iris Zhu

SUPREME AWARDS

Official of the Year Hazel Elliot

Team of the Year Year 9A

Spirit Award Year 9C

Contribution to Netball Jess Escott

Excellence in Netball Lucinda Thompson-Quinn

Junior Most Promising Thomas Carey & Chloe Lemon

9 A - Venus Lau

This season for the Year 9A netball team was a great season for us. This team really came together from the first ever training we had to our very last game, we developed new skills, experience and most importantly new friendships.

We played in different competitions including the Wednesday, Saturday and the Junior SISS tournament. The tournament was an amazing experience although we had two of our players missing, the rest of the team stood up and did not let that bother them. Day 3 and last game of the tournament was by far our best game of the whole tournament against Columba, it was a close game but the team was supportive of each other and the energy throughout the whole game helped us pull out a win 26-17.

We’ve had so many great games even though being in Division 1 winning the majority of our games. A highlight for me was the game against Villa when in the last quarter we were down by 8 and it was pouring but we huddled up, had a team talk and used our favourite line “flip the pancake” and “zero all”, we managed to pull out a win winning the game by 1.

Thank you Manu and Maddi for coaching us, making every game and training fun but serious, thank you to Dale for managing our Wednesday games, you've been a great help and more importantly to all our parents for getting us to games and supporters on the sidelines, and thank you Ms Smith for organising the season.

10 A - Meika Craig

Kia Ora my name is Meika Craig, this year I was lucky enough to have the privilege of being the 10 A's team captain.

This year for our team has been amazing, with not only strong friendships but also sportsmanship. Our team didn't kick off well at the start of the year, not winning that many games, but after a few weeks of getting used to how we all play and learning how to work as a strong team, we quickly figured it out and even placed 2nd in Division 2, which our whole team agrees is a great achievement. Our losses and wins have not only made us push to excel but have also helped us grow as a team.

Alongside our amazing coaches and Miss Smith, we have really all loved this year's netball experience, learning many new skills and making many new friendships, and I'm so excited for the years to come!

Senior A - Lulu Ovens and Lucinda Thompson-Quinn

During this 2023 netball season, the Senior A netball team faced many challenges throughout our season. Our team changed multiple times during the season as a result of injuries and other circumstances which resulted in us having a very different team from the beginning of the season. This was a big challenge for us but eventually, it made our team stronger and brought us all closer together. 

Another challenge we faced was having a different team on Wednesday and Saturday games not allowing us to have the same amount of playing time together as compared to other teams. Although it was a challenge we faced, it allowed us as a team to have a variety of different skills and experiences, as the Saturday team was partially made up of previous Burnside High School netball players from varying year groups, this allowed the younger players to learn from the older girls in the Saturday team through training and practice games. 

During the pre-season boot camp, as a team, we established goals we wanted to achieve as a team throughout the season. An example of these goals was to stay in Senior Reserve for the Saturday competition. From our hard work and dedication, we managed to achieve this goal and placed 6th in our division resulting in us securing a spot for next year. 

During the playoff game to secure our spot in Senior Reserve, we played Christchurch Girls High School, during the season we had played them a total of 2 times before the playoff game, lost one and tied one. As we were very dedicated to achieving this goal we managed to pull through a win of 29-21. 

As captains, this was an interesting final year playing for Burnside Netball, and even though we didn’t have the most fortunate season we were able to grow a lot as players, and leaders. We made lots of great new connections especially at SISS, when we didn’t have a very successful campaign but our team never gave up and always remained in high spirits.