Lithgow Netball Association has reason to celebrate after being awarded $2000 as part of Woolworths' Pick Fresh Play Fresh Grants program.
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The grants support grassroots netball clubs and associations across Australia, and are focused on helping young netball players get more healthy, fresh nutrition at training and on match days.
Woolworths has now provided over one million dollars in funding to close to 300 netball clubs in the past three years.
Lithgow Netball Association will utilise the Woolworths grant to purchase new tents, providing shade and a central spot to distribute healthy foods and snacks to fuel their netballers at carnivals.
Lithgow Netball Association's secretary Tracey Parsons said the tent will be mainly used for the representative team when they attend carnivals.
"We have some old ones that are heavy and falling apart so we want to replace them, and while they will mainly be for the representative squad, we can also use them if we want to set up a barbecue outside," she said.
Parsons said the association was happy and grateful to receive the grant.
"There are plenty of grants out there and I just happened to see this one in my emails and thought 'why not just apply' because you never know the outcome," she said.
"Anything helps, so we are just thankful to Woolworths for this."
The netball association is currently doing an online presentation of awards instead of a presentation night.
"We just didn't know what was happening with the lockdown and trying to organise that was a bit hard so we thought this was a nice way to still recognise the award winners," she said.
Winners can be found at the Lithgow Netball Association Facebook page.
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While the association didn't get to finish their Winter season, Parsons was impressed with how far they got compared to other sporting codes.
"We got all the way through our regular rounds and only missed one semi final left, we count ourselves lucky because you look at other local associations and some didn't even finish the regular rounds," she said.
"I think it paid off that we started a bit earlier this year than usual."
The association also made the unanimous decision to postpone their usual Summer competition in hopes of hosting it early next year before the Winter competition begins.
"We will look at that in the new year when we start up again, we will just keep our fingers crossed and follow the public health advice as we have been doing," she said.
Parsons said she hoped that more young kids would come and join the netball association, with them going for a big push in the 5-10 year-old section.
"We would love for them to come and join our net set go program because it is a lot of fun and that's how we feed them into joining the juniors and seniors as they get older," she said.
"Also quite often our Summer competition becomes a bit of a feeder too, so people who haven't played in a while come back, so maybe hosting it earlier in the year it will be a bigger feeder, but honestly it is just all trial and error."
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