Pictured from left to right, Colette Thomson, GB Universities Head Coach, Denise Holland, Scotland National Coach, Jan Crabtree, England Netball National Excel Head Coach and Melissa Hyndman, Welsh Netball High Performance Head Coach
LONDON – In amongst a weekend of competitive Superleague Netball, a group of the nation’s young talented netballers headed to the EIS in Sheffield for trials of an unprecedented nature – a Great Britain team will be heading to South Africa in June to take part in the inaugural FISU World University Netball Championships. It is not since a UK Select team was put together to play New Zealand in 1995 that there has been a British national team.
Having already appointed Colette Thomson (England Excel U21 Coach) as Head Coach, Mary Tough (Scotland U21 Lead Coach) as Assistant Coach and Sarah Gandon as Team Manager – the home nations performance leaders again got together to select their playing squad. With Melissa Hyndman, High Performance Head Coach for Welsh Netball chairing a selection group which also included Denise Holland (National Coach, Netball Scotland) and Jan Crabtree (National Excel Head Coach, England Netball). There was a common goal to select the strongest possible squad for South Africa.
The final group was selected after trials and scouting – and are an experienced squad of athletes currently playing at University, Superleague and many also at international level.
Team Manager Sarah Gandon said: “This is a very exciting group of young players who have a real chance of having a very successful tournament in Cape Town this summer. Our work will involve getting the team to gel together, and to do that, we have organised participation as GB Universities in the British Invitational Tournament in Glasgow on May 11 – 13. This will give us a good understanding of our ability and focus our training. We are looking forward to the competition that the World Universities stage will offer.”
(Source: BUCS)
GBR Squad
Kadeen Corbin – Bath
Sophia Candappa – Loughborough
Natalie Haythornthwaite – Leeds
Mia Ritchie – Bath
Jade Forbes-Wattley – Loughborough
Yasmin Parsons – Bath
Stephanie Burt – UEA
Jodie Gibson – Loughborough
Beth Cobden – Manchester
Rachel Mulloy – Loughborough
Rachel Shaw – Leeds Metropolitan
Lauren Steadman- Loughborough College
Non-Travelling Reserves
Jordan Moxey – Birmingham
Darcie Worsdale – Northumbria
Abigail Ryan – Durham
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