It started simply enough.
Nicole Watt, a local 16-year-old, decided she'd like to compete in the B.C. Winter Games. With that objective in mind, she checked out the Games website and soon discovered the sport of netball didn't have any northern representation.
For her next step, Watt sent an email to a provincial advisor and was told she could form a team if 10 players and a coach could be found.
Watt put the word out among her soccer- and volleyball-playing friends and, before long, had enough people interested in giving netball a shot. One of the girls, Kendra Potskin, asked dad Randy to coach. Then, the mom of player Sara Sands - Allison - joined up as an assistant coach.
Nobody - players or coaches - had any previous experience in netball but some quick research on the Internet provided the basics.
After the club had been supplied with the necessary equipment and started practicing, the provincial netball association arranged for national-team player Lianna Wong to come to Prince George to provide some expertise.
This morning, playing as Cariboo-North East (Zone 8), Watt and her teammates will take on Thompson-Okanagan B in their first B.C. Winter Games contest. The Games are being hosted by Penticton but netball is taking place in Summerland.
Watt isn't sure what to expect but has reason to believe the Zone 8 squad will be competitive.
"The girl who came up here (Wong) said we were really tall so hopefully we'll do well," Watt said.
Height is definitely advantageous in netball, which can most closely be compared to basketball but has no dribbling. In netball, the ball is advanced only by passing.
In a game, each team has seven players on the court and only two of them are allowed to shoot. The target is a 10-foot-high hoop or goal ring, with no backboard. Each player has a designated position that corresponds to a specific zone on the floor, which is divided into thirds.
A game has four 15-minute quarters and the team with the most goals at the final buzzer is declared the winner.
Other members of the Cariboo-North East team are Chelsea Madsen, Jynessa Kaulback, Kierstin Vohar, Kate Arnold, Miceala Young, Izzy Zimmerman and Erin Cole.
For the players, learning a sport completely from scratch was a challenge but they enjoyed it. In all, they practiced for about two months.
"We're all really athletic girls, we all play a bunch of different sports, so we picked up on it pretty well," said the 16-year-old Madsen.
"Then we had (Wong) come in from Vancouver and that definitely helped out a lot.
"The rules were a tough thing for us at the beginning. Before our coaches went to a coaching clinic we were just going off of what we could figure out and making it up. But they went to the clinic and we got it all solid and then we just got better and better from there."
Netball is most popular in Australia and Europe.
At the B.C. Winter Games, the gold-medal final will be played Sunday morning.
