The team taking Bay Active’s netball league by storm

Bay Venues programmes coordinator, Alexandra Baskin, recently spoke with Keri Welham on her netball team's journey with Bay Active.

“We're the Te Puke Puddings. A few of us grew up in Te Puke, and the puddings bit is obviously to do with us getting a little soft around the edges in our 30s and 40s!” says Welham.

For Keri and the team, this was their first netball season together, with most not having graced the court in years.

“Our captain played for a more competitive team in another league, so he had to learn to lower his expectations. We then added a Scotsman who had never played and a few male subs with basketball leanings,” says Welham.

She reiterates that the team was dominated by women who had dabbled in netball as kids. They began the season concerned that their ageing bodies wouldn’t remember how to recreate the acrobatic netball of their youth. However, they were proved wrong!

“We had such a fun season. We assumed we’d be thrashed in every game but ended up only losing once all season – it turned out there was some residual memory of how to play buried deep under our middle-aged spread,” says Welham. “Many of us quickly became shamelessly competitive. It went from the score doesn’t matter, to querying the result table.”

For Welham, social netball was an incredible incentive to catch up with mates once a week. It was a period of her year guaranteed to be filled with great laughs, group chat banter and modest fitness improvement.

“The organisation of the competition was epic,” says Welham, as she recounts the Bay Active team's tireless efforts to get everyone weekly games, despite the impact of Covid. “The venue is central for most of us and has acres of parking and it was a pleasant, clean place for our kids to sit on their devices and not talk to each other while we played.”

She says the Puddings will be back later in the year, hoping to continue their mostly-winning form!

If you’d like to battle the Te Puke Puddings for a podium place, check out our up and coming netball leagues here: https://www.bayactive.co.nz/sports_league