With technology continuously evolving in every aspect of our lives, netball clubs and associations are finding ways to ensure they stay up to date through the introduction of live scoring.
Casey Netball Association is one of many associations taking up the task, implementing Netball Connect's live scoring function throughout the end of their 2022 season.
Ditching the traditional pen and paper system, Casey has completely digitised their system to ensure an effective and more accurate way of scoring with the added benefit of reducing the load on their admin staff.
“Going from having paper to an iPad is a big difference. Once our first match was completed everyone felt a bit relieved and less stressed because we knew how it ran,” said Casey’s operations assistant Teagan Davies.
“Midway through the first game we settled and realised everything was fine, the weight lifted off our shoulders and all the questions we had got answered.”
There were some obstacles that had to be overcome during the process of moving to the system, but reassurance and support from Netball Victoria helped to provide guidance and confidence for Casey who were eager to make the change.
“We pretty much run out of a tin shed in Cranbourne East, when you go out to the back courts the internet drops out and you can’t get service, so that was a concern,” Teagan said.
“But once we downloaded each game it didn’t matter if we were connected to the internet – you can still score. We bought some internet dongles, so we have a couple more internet servers closer to the weaker areas,” she said.
It’s fair to say that the association is now thriving under the new system.
“The first night we did it people were like ‘oh my god the iPad is so much easier’. The parents said it was easy to use and all the instructions that they were given were clear and helpful,” she said.
In preparation for the change, Casey sent out a wealth of information to the community to ensure everyone was aware of the changes to make a seamless transition.
“The instructions were really easy, we gave them out to everybody a couple of weeks ahead. We had a delegates meeting with our clubs, we reinforced the information about live scoring again, so everyone knew what we were doing and then on the night we put it on our social media.”
Live scoring has also assisted with post-game admin when it comes to match results and player qualification, which was previously a time-consuming and tedious task for Teagan.
“Throughout the competition night I used to have to sit there for 10 minutes after each game and put in the scores, whereas now it’s already been done with the live scoring,” she said.
“With player qualification we go through all the score sheets after every competition. For the Wednesday night comp we had probably 130 junior teams and 52 senior teams all in one night.
“The next day I would sit at my computer and go through each one manually to check who had played and put it all into a spreadsheet – now it only takes teams 30 seconds to get it done and saves me hours of work,” she said.
Learn more about how your association could benefit from live scoring
