Netball: Lees calls time on Silver Fern career

Camilla Lees, right, narrowly missed selection for the World Cup team named this month. Photo / Nick Reed

After year of fulltime netball, star quits for medical studies.

Silver Fern midcourter Camilla Lees is quitting netball for good, having reached a point in her medical career where she says it is no longer possible to combine her work with the demands of playing the game at the top level.

Lees, who narrowly missed selection for the World Cup team named this month, will head to the UK at the end of August and, once her registration is completed, hopes to work in London as a house surgeon.

The 26-year-old told New Zealand coach Waimarama Taumaunu of her plans before trials, so her decision to move overseas wouldn't appear a knee-jerk reaction if she missed out on the team. Lees said she doesn't see herself returning to the sport, and will not seek out playing opportunities in the UK Superleague.

"I think I'm done [with netball] for good. I keep saying that to people and they say 'oh, you can come back'. But I think I'm ready to just step away and have a new chapter, I guess, and get stuck into work," she said.

Lees put her career on hold this year to focus all her energies on making the World Cup team for next month's tournament in Sydney. She threw in her job in Wellington and moved back home to Auckland to play beside Laura Langman, Maria Tutaia and Cathrine Latu at the Northern Mystics to try to push her case for selection.

Her efforts very nearly paid off, Lees just missing out on a spot to the Steel's Shannon Francois, in what Taumaunu described as a "line call" for the selectors. Despite sacrificing her career advancement, Lees said she believes she made the right decision to devote herself to netball this year.

"I was glad I could take some time out this year and really give netball a good go, and I can now leave without regrets and feel like I gave it my absolute all."

Lees' netball career has always tracked a little differently to most as she juggled the demands of studying towards a medical degree with her franchise and later international commitments. After establishing herself in the Silver Ferns starting line-up in 2012 and helping New Zealand to their first, and so far only, Constellation Cup win over Australia, the bubbly midcourter made herself unavailable for later tours because of her study commitments.

A foot injury kept her out of the national line-up in the 2013 season, while last year she missed out on a place in the Commonwealth Games team after struggling for form. That year, while playing for the Central Pulse in the ANZ Championship, Lees was working fulltime as a house surgeon in Wellington. Her difficulties last season prompted her to quit her job to devote all her energies to netball this year for one last crack at a World Cup.

"I had been planning for the last year or so that this would be my last season of netball, because I really wanted to get back into fulltime work to focus on my career," said Lees.

"I was really fortunate because when I first started at the Pulse, it was still quite an amateur game. We were able to work and study and fit that around training. Trainings were never in the day, it was always after work when people could get there and I think the last couple of years we've moved to a much more professional set-up, the training demands have increased and so it's become a lot more difficult to juggle."

Lees will still take part in the New Zealand A tour to Australia next month, and is staying match-fit in case she is needed as injury cover in the Ferns.

Camilla Lees

Silver Fern No:

145

Test caps:

14

Debut:

January 15, 2011, v England

Teams:

Central Pulse 2009-2014

Northern Mystics 2015