Hawks Netball is Tasmania-bound this weekend as the club counts down to the start of the 2023 Victorian Netball League season.
The Hawks’ Championship and Division 1 teams will jet into Hobart for games against the Tasmanian 19/Under and 17/Under teams, as well as Tasmania’s recently selected Australian Netball Championship squad, across both Saturday and Sunday.
Hawks Netball’s 19/Under team will also have a valuable team-building day with team activities and matchplay against the Victorian 17/U boys team.
With just four weeks until VNL Round 1, Hawks Netball head coach AJ Ballantyne said the weekend would be a critical part of the club’s preparations.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity for our club to take the players away on a weekend like this and get in some quality match practice, but more importantly just spend time together as a group and come home with some really tight connections both on court and away from it,” he said.
“We’ve got three players 20 or under stepping up into Championship for the first time this year, and two into Division 1, as well as a couple of players new to the club, so we can’t put a price on the players being able to get to know each other and develop those bonds.”
Ballantyne said it was hoped the matchplay weekend could become an annual fixture.
“I think we sometimes take for granted how lucky we are in the larger states with our access to regular matchplay against high performance teams and players, so to be able to come down to Tassie and hopefully give their teams a really good run, is a good thing for netball more broadly.”
“We’re very grateful to Netball Tasmania for hosting us and making the weekend possible, and we hope they get as much out of it as we do.”
The Hawks begin their VNL campaign against Casey Demons on Wednesday, March 15 at the State Netball Centre.