Indigenous netball camp unearths future Diamonds stars

Australian netball coach Lisa Alexander believes the sport's first ever indigenous high-performance camp has unearthed some future Diamonds stars.

Lisa Alexander

Lisa Alexander, centre, with some of the Indigenous high-perfromance netballers. Source: AAP

Twenty-one of the country's top players of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage gathered in Canberra last weekend.

National team coach Lisa Alexander said the camp is creating a legacy.

"I absolutely think this camp will unearth some Diamonds players. Even if it doesn't do that right now it will certainly set the platform for it in the future, which is what we wanted to do," she said.

"In fact just in the last session I put out the challenge to the group to say, 'well you're the first group, you've got the responsibility of making sure that this camp keeps going and gets stronger and better every year'"

On hand to mentor the rising stars was the first Indigenous woman to represent Australia, Marcia Ella-Duncan.

"This is the culmination of a lot of years of what I call trying to raise awareness about the barriers for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players," Ella-Duncan said.

"I think it's a bit surreal, meeting all these brilliant young women is very rewarding and I feel really quite inspired by them so I'm really praying and hoping that they get some deeper understanding about high-performance requirements."

It was a valuable experience for players such as Beryl Friday, in learning what it takes to be a star on and off the court.

"I didn't realise how much emphasis there was put on other areas in our life," she said.

"There's a lot of netball, obviously, but just a lot of things about improving ourselves as people in our communities so that when we do go back home we can get involved and stand up as leaders for other Indigenous women or Indigenous people in general and be a bit like a role model for them."



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By Adrian Arciuli



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