Coach pleased with Sunshine Girls’ progress at Durham training camp

Head coach of Jamaica’s national senior netball team, Sasher-Gaye Henry-Wright, says the Sunshine Girls have settled in well at their training camp in Durham, England, as they continue preparations for this month’s Commonwealth Games.

The Sunshine Girls are using the camp as part of their preparations for the Games which will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from July 23 to August 2. Jamaica will be aiming to build on their historic performance at the previous Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, where they captured their first-ever silver medal.

The team is scheduled to play two warm-up matches on July 17 and 19, and Henry-Wright noted that the fixtures will provide an ideal opportunity to assess the squad ahead of the tournament.

“The ladies have settled in very good, we have most of the players here right now and the others will be in shortly and so we are looking forward to our two practice games this week to see how the ladies will gel,” she said.

Henry-Wright said the weather conditions in England have also been favourable, allowing the players to acclimatise quickly.

“The weather here is like what we have in Jamaica and that is good for us. We will be using these games to see the different combinations and being able to work on our different strategies is very important for us at this time.”

She added that the camp is about much more than on-court preparation, with team bonding and tactical analysis also high on the agenda.

“We also want to use this camp for team building and to make decisions going into these practice games.

“The girls are in high spirits and they are looking forward to meet up with the rest of their teammates that they haven’t seen for a while because as you know some of our players play in the Suncorp Super League in Australia. We expect the bonding to grow as we do our team sessions as a unit.”

Henry-Wright highlighted that assembling the entire squad has been a challenge in recent months, making the current training camp even more valuable.

“This camp is very crucial for us because we haven’t had our full complement of players together for a while now,” she said. “We are bringing in a new player Azara Wilmot for her to work with the team and also the British-based players who have not been with us.”