Riverside Netball Club is one of hundreds of groups who applied for an award during this round of the scheme and impressed judges with their plans to use their grant to make a difference to their group and benefit the local community.

The group plans to use its award to purchase New Kit for their u14 squad.  Lynne Booth of Riverside Netball Club said: “We are very pleased with our BT Sport People Award. We have 8 junior squads to cater for and for the U14s to have a kit of their own will be tremendous and the girls are really excited.”

Tori Brady, a GCS Transformation Manager who volunteers at the club and nominated them for a BT Sport People Award, added:  “I have been a volunteer at Riverside Netball Club for six years now.  We are always low on resources and funding is hard to come by.  The BT Sport People Awards provides a great opportunity for community groups like ours to get some additional help that can make a huge difference. The new kit will have a big impact on the activities run by the club.  It is very positive that BT recognises the voluntary work of its people and supports local community activities in this way.”

Four hundred and fifty one applications were received for this round of grants and 84 applicants received awards totalling £50,980.

Applications were submitted by BT people from all over the world, including Peru, India and Belgium. These included a wide range of community organisations, from football clubs to police cadets to red squirrel protection, illustrating the wide variety of activities in which BT people are involved.

For more information and to see a complete list of the latest award recipients please visit: www.btpeopleawards.co.uk or see what BT can do to help charities by visiting: www.bt.com/charityportfolio.

For more information about netball in the North East please visit www.northeastnetball.co.uk/  or contact the North East Regional Office on [email protected] or 0191 2614116.

Congratulations to Tyne and Wear netballer Alex Glennie on her inclusion in the National Academy Potential group. 

Alex is 15 years old plays for Riverside Netball Club and her school, Gosforth Academy. She attended the England screening in March and will now be invited to Positional Days, Tri-regional days and other development opportunities.

Young coach earmarks 2014 Commonwealth Games as first step for a sport that is thriving despite its lack of Olympic status.

When England's netball coach Anna Mayes was 16 she had one ambition. "I told my mum I wanted to coach England," laughs the 32-year-old. Two years ago Mayes was appointed to that very role, having already worked with the Under 21s, and her approach has yielded phenomenal results. In Mayes' first month England won the world series, and earlier this year her side whitewashed the world champions, Australia, in a 3-0 series win (previously England had only ever beaten Australia twice, in 1981 and in 2010). England remain unbeaten in 2013.

Despite the fact that most of England's players work or study full-time Mayes, herself an autoethnography PhD student, leads a squad that is wholeheartedly professional in its outlook. Players such as the captain, Pamela Cookey, now fit in morning and evening training sessions around their day jobs, in Cookey's case a demanding role as a site services manager working for an aircraft manufacturer. From the outset the Swindon-born coach outlined an unwavering vision of where the sport should be heading. "I wanted to do something in English netball that had never been done before," she says now, "so in 2019 our mission statement is: we want to be world champions."

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