NETBALL - Healthy Easter contest in city

UP TO 4000 people are expected in Whangarei over Easter weekend as teams from across the country and their supporters descend on the city to contest the Aotearoa Maori Netball tournament.
The annual tournament is being hosted by Tai Tokerau Maori Netball at the Kensington courts.
The purpose of Aotearoa Maori netball is to create and provide opportunities for Maori to participate in netball at regional, national and international events and to promote healthy lifestyle messages using netball as the medium.
The national tournament provides the best opportunity to promote healthy lifestyle messages, organiser Jonnette Chapman said.
"We are expecting about 1000 participants, including players and officials, plus another 1000-3000 supporters at the event," she said.
There are age group representative teams: the under-13s, U15s, U17s, U19s, as well as the main area of interest, the senior competition.
Teams travel from across New Zealand to represent 11 regions at the tournament and all areas will enter teams, although the southern teams are expected to be numerically smaller than the northern areas because of the travel distance.
Some of the healthy lifestyle messages the tournament will promote include the benefits of being SmokeFree, DrugFree, and AlcoholFree.
Good nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention, good personal hygiene, respect for others and fair play will also be supported.
"We do not get many opportunities to host national events here in Whangarei or in Northland, and we are keen to make this tournament a memorable one for all participants and their supporters," Chapman said.
"As part of this memorable experience, we would like to give each of the 1000 participants a gift bag of goodies which will include relevant health promotional information and we would be grateful if the bags could also include some other small gift items."
Tai Tokerau Maori Netball represents the Northland region and is made up entirely of volunteers.
"We rely heavily on the goodwill of our volunteers and local communities to assist and support the event with manpower and sponsorship.
"We would still welcome any sponsorship or donations towards this awesome event," she said.