By Stephanie Muir

WAGGA will be in good stead at next year's prestigious State Age Championships after four promising junior representative teams were finalised on Monday.

Wagga Netball Association secretary Sue O'Leary has hailed the depth of the teams as excellent and is confident the players will continue the city's strong netball legacy.

"The 12s, 13s, 14s and 15s will be very competitive at the State Age carnival in Newcastle next year," she said.

"The standard is very good and I expect all the teams to do well at State Age.

"They will probably all be playing in division two and I would expect they will all finish very high up at the end of the three-day carnival."

State Age is the pinnacle event on the calendar for the talented contingent of rising junior netballers, and is what all teams train religiously for all year.

"The girls will start training in February and will train once a week," she said.

"But when it gets closer to State Age they might start training a couple of times a week.

"They go to four or five carnivals between February and State Age but the State Age is the main carnival for the year."

After four squads were selected just over two months ago, coaches had the responsibility of trimming the teams down after seeing the players' skills on display at a number of training sessions.

"We had the trials around September and up to 20 girls were selected," Ms O'Leary said.

"They went to six training sessions and then 10 were selected by the coach to represent Wagga.

"There were a few disappointed girls after the teams were selected."

Ms O'Leary was impressed with the number of players who trialled for the four age groups and said numbers were holding steadily from year to year.

"There is a small amount of girls who drop out but it's not very many," she said.

"There are always a lot of 12s and 13s but some of the other age groups have a few drop out when they start getting jobs or have other things they are concentrating on."