Dungog Netball Association's first open team in 12 years is gearing up to play at the Senior State Titles in Camden by playing a series of carnivals in the lead up.
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The latest of these carnivals was the Maitland Carnival held on Sunday, April 7.
The open team's coach and Dungog netball president Jess Murray said that the carnivals are to help prepare the team leading up to the titles.
"They're a new team, they haven't played together before so the carnivals are a great experience for them to get to know each other as a team and practise their skills and work out the best combinations," Murray said.
"We've already played in the Charlestown Carnival in March and we did the Maitland Carnival and we will do a carnival in Newcastle in May and then we go to the titles on the June long weekend."
The idea to put together an open team came after a number of players approached Murray during Dungog's twilight competition and were interested in setting up the team.
"We've got two mother and daughter pairs on the team. The mums wanted to experience playing representative netball with both their daughters so it's given them that opportunity," Murray said.
"So the ladies all got together at twilight and we put an expression of interest out to see who might be interested. We've got 12 players in total.
"Most netball teams have 10 players but we've got 12 just to cover us for injuries."
The new open team have players with ages ranging from 16 to 48.
They have had mixed results since coming together. The were second last at Charlestown, but improved to fifth in Maitland.
"It was a good first hit out for the team. They were all very close games, a couple of our losses we only lost by one," Murray said.
"It was very impressive for a new team. In the Maitland carnival we came fifth. We won three games and lost four."
Murray said that the biggest highlight so far has been seeing the improvement that the women have shown between the two carnivals.
Leading up to the next carnival in Newcastle the Dungog ladies are preparing with an intensive training regime at Farmstrong Fitness.
"We're finishing up twilight netball this week but our training doesn't stop. From there we're working with Mick Dillon, he's got the girls working on a fitness program," Murray said.
"Fitness is one of our main focuses. We worked out that match fitness is a big focus for us because we really need to maintain that throughout the whole game."
Murray sees the teams biggest strength as being the level of experience with senior members of the squad.
"A lot of them have been around the netball scene for a long time and they just have the sort of experience that's required to win games," she said.
The open team have started a fundraising effort to fund their trip to the state titles.
For more information visit Dungog Netball's Facebook page.
