Netball empowers girls and women through sport

: Published: 05 May 2025

netballfun

Cathryn Rich kindly updated knowitall.ch on the news from her Netball Club and let us know about the upcoming summer events. To get to know her involvement with Netball, she has shared these responses to our questions.

How did you get involved in Netball?
I am a PE teacher from Bath, UK - where I lead the Sports department at the Royal High School with a strong tradition in the game, I also played and coached at the Team Bath Club which is a large and successful club both in terms of participation numbers and in developing performance of elite players. I am a UKCC Level 2 coach and a Netball Europe B Award Umpire. I am the founding President of Swiss Netball and was Operations lead from 2009 - 2016 which brought about rapid progress in terms of participation in netball and saw our National teams achieve their greatest successes on the European stage thus far.

What is your involvement with Netball Pass Meinier?
I founded the Netball Club of Meinier in 2011 which now comprises around 100 members and is run by a committee of all female volunteers and where we are proud to encourage young women to play the game of netball but also provide opportunities to coach and umpire the game. Essentially we are an all female club made up of 60% plus Swiss members now but with an approach that integrates the local and the expat community through this team sport.

Netball Pass is the arm of netball specifically set up to run camps and extra activities for netball, we offer discounts for Meinier members but all netballers or 'wannabe netballers' are welcome to join these activities.

What is the biggest obstacle you have had to overcome while setting up or teaching here?
The greatest difficulty in developing the sport has been finding venues to accommodate it. This has been especially challenging in promoting a sport that is unknown by the Swiss community and is normally greeted with a ‘C’est quoi le netball?’

But having my home in Meinier at the time and after lots of conversations in the playground and around municipal councillors the doors opened gently in 2011 to me and the club has since been able to bring netball to Cologny, Puplinge and Chêne-Bougeries.

The club operates in French and English and works hand in hand with local communes to deliver the sport all of whom have marked netball lines in their salles de gym which was a big step for the club. Meinier Club now has a francophone President who is able to foster positive and coherent messages with the communes.

On a really positive note the netball Club of Meinier was given a Mérite Meynite prize in 2017 for contribution to the local community and for the standards achieved by players and more recently Meinier Netball was awarded the Mérite Collongeois 2024 for it’s ongoing commitment to young women across the Rive Gauche region.