We are determined to win the Asian Junior Netball Championship which is scheduled to be held next June in South Korea and our task is to unearth junior Netballers at school level said National Federation of Netball President Victoria Lakshmi at the felicitation ceremony held at Maliyadeva Balika Hall last week.
We have clinched the Asian Senior Netball championship held recently in Singapore and now we are getting ready to take the junior title and are making all preparations for that said Netball Chief Victoria. Today we felicitated National Netball Vice Captain Dulangi Wannitilleka and schools Netball President and Vice President of the National Netball Federation Nirodha Abeywickrama and myself as Netball President, Vice President of the Asian Netball Federation and Asian Regional Netball Director of the World Netball Federation. I am fortunate to be elected as the world Netball president and it is very good for Sri Lanka said Lakshmi.
Kurunegala District Netball Association organized this felicitation ceremony while all three Dulangi my self and Schools President Nirodha are from Kurunegala. I am very proud to take part in this ceremony at my own school Maliyadeva and my memories goes back to school days at Maliyadeva Balika.
I got chance to represent National team twice as a schoolgirl and I got opportunity to join the Sri Lanka Army based on my performances in Netball as well as academically and that time (in 1984) I was selected as one of the army officers out of six. Having represented Army Netball team and National team I was keen to come into Netball Administration as a senior Manager of the People’s Bank. In 2013 I entered Netball Administration and this is my second term as a Netball Administrator.
We were lucky to win the Asian Junior Netball Championship in Brunei in 2013 when Janaki Gunasekara was the Sri Lanka Junior coach that time and Dulangi Wannitilleka the present National Vice Captain was a member of the junior team at that time. Today we have appointed Amalka Gunatilleka for the National Junior coach to focus on Asian Junior Netball
Championship as well as World Junior Netball championship held in New Zealand and we wanted to go for these events with good preparation said Victoria. We have to take part at next years World Senior Netball Championship in South Africa.
Our first task is to form both Senior and Junior Netball pools and then will continue the training under the coaches and fitness is also very vital for both pools. We wanted to appoint good selection committee to select the National pools first and Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe already agreed to give facilities for the training. When we prepared for the last Asian Senior Championship we had difficulties to find a venue for training.
We had to use Bandaragama Sports Complex and hope to get new venue for the Netball training and already discussed with the Sports Ministry said the National Netball chief. Actually school is the nursery for any type of sports and we work closely with Schools Netball Federation headed by Nirodha Abeywickrama.