It was one of the driving forces behind the Dunedin coach throwing her hat in the ring to coach the Southern Blast in the National Netball League this season.
‘‘They’re just such an awesome group of girls,’’ Southby said.
‘‘They’re just really, really hungry for information. They just don’t give up. They’re bringing it at trainings. They’re awesome.’’
It is her first major role since her tenures with the Southern Steel and the Silver Ferns, but she has never been far from the court.
Netball has kept her busy in recent years. She coached St Hilda’s Collegiate, Dunedin under-18 and the Dunedin open team, and guided University Albion A — the club she previously played for — to a threepeat in the premier club competition.
She has had her finger on the pulse of player development through the South and felt she could help when the Southern Blast role came up.
‘‘I feel like I’ve got something to add. I just think we’ve got to invest in the young ones or else you’re not going to have a league that’s going to have them going forward.
‘‘I just actually want to add value to the local kids that deserve a shot.’’
The Southern Blast were initially cut from the Netball South programme for this season but were resurrected following a public outcry to support pathways for the zone’s rising talent.
The squad got together in March, while other National Netball League teams had been training since December and most other teams had players with ANZ Premiership experience.
‘‘We’re running on the smell of an oily rag.
‘‘We don’t have a budget for high performance or anything, so it’s really challenging me to go, ‘well, how can I add value to them?’ and what it is to be at the next level so they understand and it’s not such a big gap for them to go from here to ANZ.
‘‘Sometimes you see the little gaps and you think ‘oh, that’s right, they’ve never experienced it before’.
‘‘I guess that’s what we’re trying to do is just give them as much of a high performance environment as we can.
‘‘I guess my experience at the high performance level is helping in that — it’s nice to be able to give back.’’
Like many netball fans, Southby is frustrated at seeing former players coming out of retirement to plug gaps in the ANZ Premiership.
Several players, such as Georgia Heffernan and Laura Balmer, came through the Blast pathway and were proof the system worked.
Southby said she wanted more ANZ Premiership coaches to look at NNL players and give them a shot at the next level.
‘‘I just totally believe in these kids,’’ Southby said.
‘‘They take time but you’ve got to give them a chance because if they don’t know, they don’t know what they have to do to go away and work on.’’
Asked if she would like to see more investment from Netball New Zealand for the next generation, Southby said ‘‘totally’’.
‘‘It just baffles me that the programmes underneath the elite stuff are kind of missing.
‘‘We don’t know if they’re happening ... from year to year.
‘‘There just seems to be no budget and ... you lose your development players that you care about.
‘‘I teach fulltime and I’ve got kids who are opting to play rugby at intermediate level as opposed to netball, so netball needs to up its game in that space.
‘‘I feel really strongly. I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen a lot and we don’t have the numbers coming through we used to.
‘‘You can’t just keep praying that the next best Silver Fern is going to come out of the woodwork if you don’t do any work.’’
The Blast were competitive but lost their opening two games of the NNL season.
They meet the winless Northern Marvels in Invercargill on Sunday.
