On behalf of the board of directors, players, staff and affiliates of Netball Jamaica, I would like to thank our sponsors for their unwavering support over the years.

Special thank you to all 2017/2018 squad sponsors: Sports Development Foundation, Best Dressed Chicken, Greys of Cambridge (Gilbert), Dairy Industries Limited, Scotia Bank Limited, Tropical Blue Natural Spring Water, as well as league sponsors Berger Paints Jamaica Limited, Supreme Ventures and Sunshine Cereals along with all other contributors to the various other netball projects.

We applaud you for being the wind beneath our wings. It is your combined contribution that was the major catalyst in the recent spate of high performances that were put on display by our Sunshine Girls. Our performance along with that of arguably our main rival, the England Roses, has shaken the world of netball and it is an upward trend that we will be working hard to sustain. The world is watching anxiously and excitedly, and we like it!

Our local media has always worked hard to keep us on our toes. However, the art and science of journalism is a hugely challenging one as journalists must juggle competing priorities of selling newspapers, presenting news from a variety of perspectives at the same time, and contextualising facts within prescribed column-inch and word counts. I would like to address an article that was reported in the Gleaner on April 25, 2018 and reassure supporters and allies of the sport who may be disturbed, alarmed or offended by the article. The statements reported in the article were excerpts from an interview where questions were posed by the journalist but presented without the benefit of explained context.

My only intent throughout the conversation was to shed honest light on the everyday realities of the Sunshine Girls. However, on reading the printed article, it was easy to see how a string of quotes without inclusion of the questions that were posed, could lead to misunderstandings. This could have been further exacerbated as the article was being written by a third party and not the person who called me to seek my opinion.

During the conversation, I was asked, in summary, to give an opinion on the Sunshine Girls’ ability to sustain the recent high performance going forward. The response could not have been an unqualified “yes” or “no” as we all know that performance maintenance is contingent on the ability to maintain good practices and improve on all areas of weaknesses. In hindsight, the words were loaded, but no probing questions followed these words.

“We remain hopeful that we will be able to go there and do well. Australia, New Zealand and England have seen what we are capable of and so they are going to step up their game, and they have the funding to do that and we, unfortunately, don’t,” she said.… We can’t even step up our training method because we can’t even access the (National) Indoor (Sports) Centre regularly to train, and we don’t have proper nutrition around the team and we are not paying our girls any kind of decent stipend. There are a number of issues,” Daley-Morris lamented.

I would like to put some context to the responses that were strung together as a [lament] in the article. At no time was it ever suggested that there was no support for the sport or the team. The response was focused on what else is needed for the Sunshine Girls to continue to do well in future competitions. It speaks to what is lacking at this juncture, compared to what would be adequate to prepare the team for consistent high-quality world-class performances. Netball Jamaica has been engaged in stakeholder lobby for years, as one of our goals is to reposition the sport in such a way that consistently supports high-quality world-class performance. Of course, achieving this feat requires the creation of an environment where high performance is inevitable and sustainable, but this level of development requires better investments than what exists currently.

Pillars for Success

Netball Jamaica, through the help of a small group of dedicated sponsors and volunteers, has worked consistently hard to place the Sunshine Girls on the current pathway to high performance, but this is mostly derived from a labour of love as the funding that this sport attracts continues to be relatively small in comparison to what is needed and that of our competitors internationally. All stakeholders in this process continue to do what they do because these young Jamaicans are naturally talented; it is only left to the imagination what heights could be reached if we can do more. The inputs of high performance include: good leadership (vision, support, challenge); performance enablers (information, instruments, incentives); people (attitudes, behaviours, capacity); and organisational culture (achievement, well-being, innovation, internal processes).

Training Facilities

These pillars of high performance were what my reflections were based on when I stated that, “we can’t even step up our training method because we can’t even access the (National) Indoor (Sports) Centre regularly to train”. This does not negate the support of Independence Park, which ensures current access to the sprung wooden surface for training that the team continues to enjoy. It was simply a request to join me in imagining the greater success that could be enjoyed if this was available all the time. But we understand the financial cost (electricity, maintenance etc) attached to such an asset. We remain grateful for the national allocation for teams to use the sprung wooden surface, which has been in place since 2014. This allocation has been invaluable, and we thank the Government of Jamaica who initiated this grant to underwrite the costs for use of Independence Park for training facilities for national preparation. The policy is still in place today and it provides the current access to the indoor facility that the Sunshine Girls utilise.

The benefit of this support is less surface-related injuries for the players, who are able to develop their skills on the surface which is an international standard. However, we do not always have access to that kind of surface as the facility is used for other events and the financial allocation cannot pay for full-time usage. Even so, Major Desmon Brown is sympathetic to our cause and has been very helpful in those regards.

Therefore, I do apologise sincerely if any ill will came about from the statement. It was never my intent to negate the contribution of the facility allowance to the success of the team, but advocate for full use for all training sessions.

Nutrition

The second area in the above quotation that I must seek to qualify reads as follows: “we don’t have proper nutrition around the team…” I must state emphatically that Netball Jamaica is fortunate and blessed to be surrounded by loyal sponsors who ensure that funding in cash or kind are in their annual budgets for the Sunshine Girls. For example, the Sunshine Girls enjoy a nutritious feeding programme which remains our pride and joy, and we do not have to worry about the sourcing of protein for this programme as Best Dressed Chicken supplies us with this commodity monthly. It is also public knowledge that squad players receive breakfast or dinner after training sessions.

However, the mention of “proper nutrition” needs to be clarified as in sport this does not refer to the absence of a balanced meal. This statement refers to the sports and exercise nutrition — a field that is not given full attention in our current training programme because it requires the input of a specialist. The absence of an active sports and exercise nutrition component from our current programme was identified as a weakness by us and is felt to be among the things that have separated the top four netball teams in the world over the years.

Nutrition in this context focuses on the management of food consumption, a vital element for us to address to guarantee higher performances as we progress. Hence, we would wish to add to the services of a sports and exercise nutritionist (team nutritionist), as we move forward, to provide ongoing consultation with individual athletes and to the management team.

Rewarding Players

The last element of the same statement focused on the stipend, which read as follows: “…and we are not paying our girls any kind of decent stipend…”

Once again, it is our current nutrition sponsor, Best Dressed Chicken, that provides the funding to cover the salary of our coaches, medical supplies, nutritional supplements, rehydration fluids, and a monthly stipend to the players. It is now up to Netball Jamaica to secure sponsorship and build income streams to provide more than the maximum $10,000 stipend that the most senior player receives currently. In fact, we must work hard to ensure that their remuneration is increased incrementally until it is of a standard that is comparable to international competitors within a Jamaican context.

It is distressing for our athletes and disheartening for us that to date, we have not managed to secure the usual and expected bonus to show our appreciation for their sterling performance in the last two competitive encounters as winners of the Quad Series and bronze medallists at the prestigious Commonwealth Games.

I sincerely hope that the explanations provided will serve to contextualise the thoughts which were shared with the reporter three weeks ago. As has been highlighted, my main aim was to briefly describe the current state of the sport while reflecting on what can be done to improve it, if we are to close the gaps in high performance that currently exist between the Sunshine Girls and rival countries in the netball world —Australia, New Zealand and England.

Editor’s note: Dr Paula Daley-Morris is president of Netball Jamaica.