WARMINSTER SMASHERS
It has been three years since WS SMASHERS formed. It all began when Mrs Butterworth entered a team into the Moonraker Winter League, at Devizes Leisure Centre. The Moonraker Netball League, welcomes teams from across Wiltshire, providing competition in the winter season for clubs and teams.
Leanne Lewis, Teacher of PE & Girls Games said, “Mrs Butterworth found a great opportunity for our girls to have access to a competitive league. The league has 5 divisions and is an outdoor netball league for adult clubs within Wiltshire. The majority of players are adults and train on a weekly basis for their netball clubs. It is competitive and a good stretch for our pupils at Warminster, ensuring they are going out of their comfort zone.”
Following the success of last season’s promotion, Warminster has increased the number of young ladies accessing the Moonraker Winter Netball League, and entered another team into the league for the 2016-17 season. This has been a great success with over 20 pupils signed up to play for either the first or second squad. The girls are pushed each week with fixtures and are improving and developing their netball.
It has so far been a great success. WS SMASHERS first team have played two matches and won both. Salome Rotanavunivasa has picked up the player of the match award voted by the opposition, a great achievement in her step into adult netball. The team have shown some great flair in attack and have won both matches by a large score line. Jade Hartley, Claudia Eeles and Phoebe Scamell have all shot well, their weekly shooting practice with Superleague and Welsh international Chelsea Lewis is obviously paying off. Wales World Cup goal-shooter Chelsea Lewis joined Team Bath Netball for the 2016 Superleague season and is rated as one of the best young attacking talents in the game and already has 50 international caps. Using Leanne Lewis's connections with Team Bath Netball and the fact she coached Chelsea as a youngster, we are able to make use of her coaching and expertise in twice weekly shooting clinics at Warminster.
WS SMASHERS 2 have also made a promising start winning one of two of their matches. Mrs Butterworth is leading the team and enjoying playing alongside our talented ladies. Robyn Glennard-Cade has made a promising start, scoring a large proportion of the goals. Lucie Brinker and Poppy Helm have been strong in defence and made their opponents work for every goal.
Mrs Butterworth commented, “We are grateful to Warminster School and Sewfantastic who have kindly supplied and designed our fantastic new squad tops, they look very smart. I am thrilled to see so many young ladies taking up the opportunity to play netball outside of school and see this as a positive step to strengthening the netball programme at Warminster School and perhaps nurturting future World Cup talent!”