MENTAL stress on volunteers and the uncertainty for families are a couple of reasons behind Wagga Wagga Netball Incorporated's decision to cancel all winter competitions.
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All grades from under eights to first grade have been abandoned with no finals to be played, and teams who finished top of the table awarded premierships.
The fate of the Tuesday night competition, which doesn't finish until the end of the year, will be determined by future government restrictions.
"We had everything done until round 14 but as an executive we decided it would be first past the post for all divisions including 12s up to A-grade," WWNI president Rosemary Clarke said.
"We literally have a time frame for our competitions to run, we're not like a lot of other sports. I don't think we could go until the end of October, that would be unfair for other sports like athletics, touch football and softball.
"A lot of our A-grade players wouldn't be able to play, we're relying on what's going on with back to school and not all players live in our LGA either.
"We thought we were very lucky this year, last year we got about eight rounds and a final in, this year 14 rounds."
"Let's face it, we don't know when we'll be out (of lockdown). We can't keep kids hanging around wondering if they keep training. All our coaches are volunteers, we just can't expect that from anybody," Clarke said.
"There's still discussions around whether we have a twilight comp for schools, but we have to see what the health orders are and what needs to be done.
"I'm watching some on our committee who are teachers struggling doing school online for weeks, and coaching on Zoom is more exhausting than you can imagine.
"We have more than one game being played at any one time, it's very hard to manage with the restrictions and doing the right thing."
Clarke said she expects a big turnover on the committee as some incumbents take a deserved break.
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"The netball community has been amazing. It's been tough, they've done a great job to keep it going," she said.
"I have to thank my executive. It's been two years of very hard work for volunteers, getting to the venue at 8am and leaving at 6pm to make sure we have the right times between games and so forth.
"It's enormous stress on volunteers. I know we will lose a number of volunteers on our executive as it's been two years of hard slog for them.
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