St Marcellin girls like their new equipment - from left, Yasmin Christenhusz, Ciara McEwan, Holly Lennox, Te Reo Tuatahi Mareikura, Sharliah Rawiri, Jaime Maybery and Jesmy Jaison.
St Marcellin girls like their new equipment - from left, Yasmin Christenhusz, Ciara McEwan, Holly Lennox, Te Reo Tuatahi Mareikura, Sharliah Rawiri, Jaime Maybery and Jesmy Jaison.
The netball hoops at St Marcellin School have been getting vandalised for as long as caretaker Aaron Mahony can remember.
But now it seems like he has come up with a solution to the problem.
As well as his caretaker duties, Mahony is also the coach of the Wanganui Collegiate School junior A netball team.
The Collegiate players and their parents raised funds to buy St Marcellin School a portable netball hoop, which can be wheeled in at night and locked out of sight from vandals.
Mahony is also an assistant coach of the St Marcellin netball team, which his wife Melissa coaches.
"Unfortunately, with a small school of 56 students, funding's tight and that's why these Collegiate girls fundraised the money to help them out," he said.
"These netball hoops get vandalised most weekends — that's why we've got them in tyres and bricks.
"It has been happening for years and got to the stage where it wasn't worth putting them out."
The Collegiate team recently won the Fly Palmy Competition and were rewarded with a training kit valued at over $300 which included netballs, bibs and more.
They donated this gear as well as the portable hoop, then trained with the St Marcellin team and had a friendly game against them.
"St Marcellin has a cool little team that are enthusiastic and it's good to be able to provide some gear for them," Mahony said.
"They've sort of struggled to come together as a team and obviously that's been difficult without the equipment, too."
Now Mahony has challenged other secondary school and club teams to follow their generous lead.
"We are setting a challenge for them to boost the sport and support intermediate and primary school teams," he said.
"It's really important for the survival of the game, especially in Whanganui where there's a bit of a downslide. It's about pumping these numbers back up again."
Mahony said the drop in participation was occurring nationwide.
"Gone are the days when teachers were generally your sports coaches — they've got so much on their plate that they have deadlines with now.
"It's about the clubs getting a group of parents in and teaching them what skills they need to be coaching, the rules of the game and how to coach as well."
