Ursula Smith Wins West Midlands Community Netball Volunteer of the Year

Netball West Midlands has this week nominated Ursula Smith for the Community Netball Volunteer of the Year award due to her efforts in developing High 5 and Junior Netball within the county.

On a local level Ursula has worked within Staffordshire Moorlands since 1989 where she decided to set up Tean Valley netball club. Long before school club links came about Ursula set up links with all the local primary school by delivering a 5 week block of coaching sessions to all interested youngsters. Teachers were invited along and the sessions were used as a development tool for them to gain more knowledge to take back to their own schools. Once the high sessions were delivered all youngsters were invited to attend Tean Valley Netball club. Numbers for the taster sessions are now as high as 95 and 70 of these regularly take up the coaching.

In 2001 Ursula (pictured far right) decided to broaden her talents and set up a Netball Development Group for Staffordshire. This group took on the task of a High 5 county tournament. Ursula approached all 9 local authorities within the county and asked them to sit on the group and help to enter teams into this tournament. 8 of the 9 local authorities take part with 130 youngsters entering. On top of this each of the local authorities has their own tournament to determine their top teams, estimating that an extra 700 young boys and girls take part.

Ursulas dedication to Netball cannot be beaten- she gives up 20 hours a week, over 3 evenings and weekends preparing, delivering and organising her club teams, always ensuring she includes everybody no matter what the ability.

Towards the end of 2006 Ursula attended the sports coach UK Guide to Mentoring course, so she could go back to her club and train young coaches to gain their coaching certificate. She saw this of benefit club and members and has given up extra time to help these coaches progress and motivate them to develop.