Dunedin-based New Zealand Secondary Schools Netball head coach and former Silver Fern netballer Jo Morrison said if young netballers were doing all of the right things and looking after themselves off the court, they would be available for her to select for a New Zealand representative team to play against the Australian under-17 team in July.
Unfortunately, many young netballers are being injured, and Otago players are among the highest ACC injury claimants in the country.
In 2025, more than 23,700 people nationally made claims for netball-related injuries, costing $51million to help people recover.
Of those, 1249 were from Otago, costing the taxpayer $2.8m.
Most injuries were soft tissue injuries (20,976), followed by fractures/dislocations (1565), and 10-14 year-olds were the age group with the highest number (6514) of injuries in 2025, followed by 15-19 year-olds (4803).
Morrison is developing the nation’s future players by introducing NetballSmart — a free resource developed by ACC and Netball New Zealand that provides a range of strategies to improve performance and prevent injuries in young players.
It covers warm-up, cool down and recovery, skill and technique development, training load, wellbeing and injury management.
‘‘As coaches, we want players that can consistently step up,’’ she said.
‘‘Everyone can turn up to netball and have a good training session or game, but to do that consistently, you’ve got to be able to build your body, fuel it correctly, recover, and go, and go again.’’
She said it was all ‘‘the little things’’ players did away from training and games that contributed to the big wins.
‘‘It’s about doing the basics and doing them well, consistently, repeatedly, under pressure and fatigue.’’
A study published by the British Medical Journal in 2008 found that teams performing the NetballSmart warm-up at least twice a week had 37% fewer training injuries, 29% fewer game injuries, and severe injuries reduced by almost 50%.
One area she was focused on as a coach was developing an ‘‘athlete voice’’ in her young players.
‘‘It’s educating players about their load and what’s going to be best for them in the long term.
‘‘If you just keep saying yes to everything, you’ll get burnt out.
‘‘An athlete voice is having the confidence to have those conversations with your coaches, parents, school and all the people who are influencing you.’’
She said the voice was particularly important in secondary school-aged players.
‘‘They’re navigating so many things, juggling other sports practices, exams — you can’t overload them.’’
She said NetballSmart was online, it was free, and it enabled her to educate all players far beyond the reach of the 2026 New Zealand Secondary Schools Netball team.
