Wales Netball
July 1, 2020
On Wednesday 24 June, Welsh Netball hosted a first-ever digital fitness session for its members starring previous Welsh international and PT coach, Sophie Morgan.
Netballers across Wales have had to adapt to life under Coronavirus lockdown and part of this has been playing ‘netball from home’ and exercising under social distancing restrictions. Throughout the pandemic, netballers and clubs from across the country have been engaging in online training sessions and skills challenges from their bedrooms, living rooms, gardens, driveways and streets. This inspired Welsh Netball to host a pilot an online training session on Zoom exclusively for its members, with help from Sophie.
Within 24 hours of launching registration for the session, there had already been hundreds of individual registrations for the session. In the event, over 150 different households took part in the evening session and the feedback from the session was excellent. Our feedback survey revealed that over 96% of respondents ‘enjoyed [the session] a lot’ and over 91% stated that they would ‘definitely’ participate in another session. Moreover, over three quarters of respondents said that following the session they were ‘more likely’ to take additional exercise, showing just how motivating the online training session was.
Reacting to the success of the digital training session, Ben Williams, Welsh Netball’s Head of Community Development said: “We were blown away by the response from Welsh Netball members who signed up for the session. We have seen some fantastic examples of netballers keeping fit during the pandemic so we wanted to organise something especially for our members to provide added value to their Welsh Netball membership whilst we can’t be on court at the moment.
“Hundreds of netballers of all ages and backgrounds joined Sophie for the sessions and we were heartened to see the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the pilot. This means that we will now hope to offer future sessions featuring our elite netball athletes as we look to work innovate our model of delivery for the ‘new normal’.
“I would like to thank Sophie for leading the session all those who took part in what was a first for us at Welsh Netball.”
Welsh Netball will be in contact with members with details of future digital netball sessions once confirmed. We would like to thank all those who attended the session with Sophie and who completed the participant questionnaire which will help shape future sessions.
