by SHERRYLYN A. TOPPIN

SOME NETBALL COACHES and managers will soon know if they are on the path they charted for their teams and clubs at the start of the season, or if things have gone horribly wrong.

The Barbados Netball Association (BNA) will be staging what president Octavia Gibson calls "a mid-season review" to determine if the conditions mandated by the Coaches Oversight Committee (COC) are being put in place by those who attended the training session earlier this year.

"We will be reviewing where we are with all of the things we said we were going to do. The coaches will have their review session with the Coaches Oversight Committee," Gibson said.

"They would've had things to implement and now they have to report whether they are working, the goals they would've set for their teams, or if they will have to go back to the drawing board."

Scorecard

Gibson said during an earlier training session the COC developed a scorecard or template which would guide coaches throughout the season.

"This includes what goals they [coaches] have for the team; what position they want the team to be in at the half-way stage and any weakness they detect in the players because they had to do an assessment.

"They have to go back and see whether the scores are in the position that they expect and then have to ask why not."

A date will soon be set for the meeting which was originally scheduled to be held after the first round of competition.

There will also be meetings with the managers, the board and a general meeting for players and clubs to discuss the season and other concerns.

Another meeting will be held "for everyone associated with the national team to make sure they were all on the same page", as the BNA looks ahead to the Americas Federation Netball Association (AFNA) tournament in St Vincent and the Grenadines in July.

Gibson also announced that Barbados, the 11th ranked team in the world, would be able to play in the Commonwealth Games if they remained within the top 12 since qualifiers won't be necessary.

Qualifiers

"There will be qualifiers for the World Tournament where they look to get teams from the various regions, while Commonwealth is more interested in the top 12 netball teams in the world.

"They would look at the ranking, which makes it important that you play the requisite number of games within the year so that your ranking will be a true ranking.

"For each game that you play you get points and if you play a higher placed team the points differ, but a win is a win and a loss is a loss," Gibson said.

The senior national team will be looking to earn their first points for the year at the AFNA tournament.