Twelve local and foreign Netball competitions next year

By Susil Premalal

The Sri Lanka Netball Federation has decided that Junior and Senior players will take part in eight International competitions next year.

Four other National Level Tournaments too have been scheduled.

The first International Tournament Sri Lanka will play will be on February 20-25 in a four-nation Test series in Hong Kong. The participating teams are: Brunei, Kenya, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka.

In April, Sri Lanka will be visited by three countries. In May, Malawi or Kenya teams will visit Sri Lanka while in June, Sri Lanka will visit South Korea to take part in the Asian Netball Championships. In June, Sri Lanka’s under-16 team will visit Singapore to take part in the Singapore Academy Netball Tournament.

During November – December, the Sri Lanka under-19 team is scheduled to take part in a competition in Dubai. During the same time will be the Singapore National Cup Tournament. The Asian Indoor Games Championships will be in Thailand where a date has not been fixed.

In local competitions, the Inter-Association Tournament will be held in March while the Inter-Club Championships is set to be held in July. In August, the Netball Nationals will take place and in September will be the Junior Nationals.

The Netball Federation has prepared three pools. They are: the National Pool (35 players), the under-16 Pool (60 players) and the under-19 Pool (56 players).

Eight coaches have been appointed, namely; Tilaka Jinadasa (National Coach), Yasanthi Thusharika and Lakmini Samarasinghe (under-16), Semini De Alwis and Mangalika Jayakody (Assistants), Amalka Gunatilleke and Kumari Gamage (under-19) and Dilshan Buddhika (Assistant).