Eight players set off to Worthing for our very first walking netball festival on a very hot day!

It was classed as a fun event based around the countries of the Commonwealth Games. We were lucky enough to be England and dressed in red and white. Tutus were the order of the day plus face painting, red flags in tape on our shirts and some natty headbands. I have to say we looked pretty amazing.

The day was organised with fun in mind and we played three games and took part in the shooting and passing activities which gave us some new activities to take back to the group.

Although the game scores were not recorded you couldn’t stop teams from knowing whether they won or lost. Our first game was against ‘Malawi’, and although the organisers had said we should take it easy and slow the games down, this was not the case as everyone was competitive. They were a very good team and we were understandably nervous and only lost by the narrowest of margins. Our second game was against ‘New Zealand’ and we were starting to be more confident and managed to win by the narrowest of margins! Our third and final game was against ‘Scotland’ and it was this game where we came into our own displaying some great passing and shooting. In between the games we had fun activities. We became very adept at the passing activities but not so good on the shooting activities.

All in all we had an amazing day and Jan especially made one new friend! One of our players of the day has to go to Elaine who proved to be so good at shooting on the day. Having said that all the players played their hearts out and we worked so well together. The team was: Sheila, Dinah, Sue, Elaine, Jan, Jack, Mary and myself. We are certainly up for the next one! Thanks to everyone for a memorable day.

Ann McLean

Walking Netball Host