Important Season Information

Hi All

Given the weather of the last two weeks and the ongoing unpredictability of the weather this season and with only 6 playing days remaining before the handover deadline of the Netball courts for the summer season to the Tennis club the board has decided that a variation to the publish competition schedule will be made.

This change will return the final scheduled season playing Saturday (24th of September) into the pool as a reserve day (currently we have none) and will bring the final scheduled playing day back within the school term window.

In order to facilitate this there is a need to modify the finals series from the current three-week series to a two week finals series. This will now take the format as below

Week one (Saturday 10 September) Semi Finals - 1st in grade plays 4th in grade, 2nd in grade plays 3rd in grade, 5th/6th playoff if applicable)
Week two (Saturday 17th September) Finals Day - winner of the two semi-finals play off in the final - all other teams finished

Finally, we know many have experienced the cold and wet conditions over the past few playing Saturdays and while netball is a winter sport we are aware that there are many views in our netball community about play continuing on these days and should a call have been made to cancel. The decision to either cancel or play Netball each Saturday is not one taken lightly and is not made by one person. The process involves input from both weather forecasts, live information such as rain radar images as well as inputs from people on the ground at the courts in real time. Many of our board members and officials are at the courts from 7.30am on a playing day till long after play has concluded for the day and many experience the weather conditions just as our players and spectators do. While they do their best to ensure that the correct calls are made each Saturday during the season this can prove challenging when conditions are changing over the course of the day round to round.

We would like to assure all our netball members that the board regularly reviews the decisions made with the aim of continuous improvement and the decisions regarding play from the last two Saturdays will be subject to this review process for future playing days/seasons with learnings factored in

Regards

JR

John Roach
Netball Kapiti President