From Club of the Year to courtside

Three coaches from Sheffield’s DNC Netball Club (formerly Dronfield Netball Club), England Netball’s 2023 Club of the Year, got the chance to experience elite netball as they watched the Nations Cup at the First Direct Arena in Leeds in January.

England Netball offered Alex Styan and her fellow coaches Donna Glover and Amanda Beevers the chance to go courtside to see the world’s best netballers as a thank-you for the fantastic work they have done for their incredible club. It is typical of the coaches that in the week they were offered the tickets, the three of them had gifted around 75 hours of volunteering, supporting well over 200 netballers.

It has been quite a year for the club all round. As Alex says: “It’s not just getting to see the Nations Cup in Leeds, amazing though that was. We also officially opened our new DNC Netball home, Canon Medical Arena, in Sheffield. All our members without exception got the opportunity to take to the new show-court and the day finished with DNC 1s playing the inaugural match against Netball Ireland Emeralds in front of over 600 family and friends. Ama Agbeze, former Roses captain, gave a hugely inspirational speech at the start and stayed around to award player of the match after the game.”

Canon Medical Arena is a brand-new purpose-built basketball and netball arena on the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, with three indoor courts, a café, a multi-purpose hall with a sprung floor, a classroom and a board room, as well as offices for the professional sports organisations that call the arena home. There are two spectator stands that can be set up with seating for up to 2,000 spectators. The arena is the home of B Braun Sheffield Sharks (BBL) and B Braun Sheffield Hatters (WBBL) and of the non-profit company Arena Netball, established to provide all netball at the arena and facilitate DNC Netball to be established as the home club.

Alex explains: “All the organisations that are based at the arena fit well together, with the same strong community-based approach. They all have a real desire to create opportunities for reducing barriers to playing netball and basketball, to talent ID young athletes and to provide playing opportunities.

“Over 350 – and growing! – netballers are now based with DNC at the arena. We have developed a performance pathway that takes athletes through from U12 to senior, as well as a core competitive club netball pathway from U10 to senior and full participation drop-in sessions for all ages, including Y2-Y4 minis and Walking Netball.”

The coaches at the Nations Cup.

Alex concludes: “To get to this stage has taken around two years of behind-the-scenes volunteer work, and we are so grateful for the hours put in by the many remarkable volunteers who bought into our vision.

“Being involved since the arena was a muddy plot of land, selling netball to the board as the second sport to be based there, and creating the vision and the model for netball at the arena, has been an incredible opportunity. But what we have achieved so far is just the start compared to the opportunities we are in the process of creating now!”

Follow the club at @dncnetball and @arenanetball