FROME netball club has been in existence for over 69 years. It was started by June Barnes MBE, along with others, who wanted to play netball competitively.
The club report “June is still involved in the club as Honorary Life Chair and has seen lots of changes over those years. The club originally played in the Somerset League for many years, but it now plays its netball in the Moonraker League, based in Devizes. While it started with just the one team, Frome now have three teams consisting of Stars, Diamonds who both play in the Premier League and Hearts who play in Division 2.
“They also run a thriving junior section and many girls from this have gone on to compete in seniors. A casual session is also run for people not wanting to commit to league netball.
“Netball has been hit badly by Covid-19. The league stopped back in March 2020 and has not resumed as yet. Frome will not go back to playing league netball until September of this year, although if things allow, we should be able to run our summer league. During lockdown, teams kept in touch with quizzes and chats over Zoom and then when we could return to training, we had no courts as Oakfield School was shut, so we resumed at the rugby club in the car park! Training revolved mainly around fitness and ball skills, but for most, it was just great to see our team mates. Netballs had to be sanitized every 15 minutes as did players’ hands.
“We held our annual presentation in the car park at the end of September and then had our AGM via Zoom as this was needed to be done.
“We finally resumed back in October to Oakfield, where we selected our teams for the coming season as there was a thought we might resume in January of this year. We managed to train and play right through until Christmas and teams were beginning to gel, when we were back into lockdown and no netball. Fingers crossed we might play after Easter.”
