It was the early 90s. Grunge fashion was in, Prime Minister Paul Keating wasn’t yet out, and Karren Clark was walking along Swan St in Richmond one life-changing Saturday morning when she saw a netball centre she didn’t know existed.
Two junior teams were playing. Clark, in her late 20s and a graduate of the Springvale and District Netball Association, had moved to inner-city Abbotsford not long before.
“I stopped and parked and walked in and said ‘do you need an umpire?’ And they said ‘can you start now?’,’’ Clark recalls, laughing at the memory.
That was how it began.
How did it end? It hasn’t.
Originally a volunteer umpire at the RNA, Clark has filled almost every role imaginable en route to becoming the full-time general manager nine years ago.
“I jumped onto the board, I’ve done a bit of coaching. I’ve been a sausage-turner-overer, to umpire mentor, to everything in between,’’ says Clark. “We’re all jacks of all trades; you’ve just got to be flexible and do what needs to be done.’’
While now in a paid position, Clark’s role includes continuing to mentor the umpires and overseeing the volunteers. The latter, specifically, is a six-strong board and 66 coaches of the Saturday and Monday night junior teams.
So, as Australia celebrates National Volunteer Week, how difficult is the unpaid workforce to attract?
Board/committee members sometimes need to be persuaded, says Clark; less so the coaches, with Richmond’s situation unusual because individual teams are not club-based. That includes many solo players who call and ask to join.
Coaches come from multiple sources, with hands typically raised by parents, siblings and living-away-from-home students at nearby schools such as Melbourne Girls’ Grammar.
“We do something a bit different in that we try to entice boarders who are in Melbourne to come and be part of the community through netball, so they’re not just stuck at school or in the boarding house,’’ says Clark.
“They actually become part of the fabric of the netball community, and that’s been really successful. We get them for two or three years, until they finish Year 12. Most of them are country girls, and they’re just gorgeous.
“Most of them do or have played netball back home, so it’s not new or foreign for them; they just didn’t realise they could do it here, unless there was someone at the school or in the boarding house who assisted them to get out and see what was available.’’
While less visible, committees (or a board in Richmond’s case) make an essential contribution to what Clark describes as both the “social and the economic fabric of netball, because at community level, if you don’t have them, your sport doesn’t run’’. Clark, as the administrator and public face of RNA, implements on a day-to-day basis what has been plotted and planned around the board table.
For example, a six-week season late last year welcomed the sport’s overdue return from its Covid pause. Meanwhile, the Swan St courts have been redeveloped and the pavilion rebuild is being completed - with Netball Victoria’s massive help, but with board input and leadership also crucial.
Clark says that while it can be time-consuming for families with multiple commitments, many people underestimate both their own skills and the reward they might receive in return. Her job is to persuade them otherwise.
“You do have to go and tap people on the shoulder,'' says Clark. "Often you can see someone that’s showing a bit of leadership, or you know that they work in, say, PR or something and you’re trying to fill that little void.
“At first they’re a bit surprised:: ‘Oh, me? No, I wouldn’t be any good’.’’ Clark then finds herself specifying some of the tasks involved. The reply, often: “Oh maybe I could do that”.
“Sometimes I just think it’s the recognition that ‘hey, someone thinks that I could actually do that job, or that role’, because I do think we undersell ourselves,'' says Clark.
“Most of us are leaders in some way in our own life or our own jobs, and I think that’s a skill that you can bring to a board and then just flourish, depending on what your role is on the board. But I think we can all be board members.’’
So back to that day in the 1990s, when Clark recognised what she could offer, then walked in and did. Had she not stopped and volunteered, would she have gone elsewhere,? Would she have missed out on re-connecting with netball at all? Would she be where she still, happily, is?
“I’ve never wanted to leave!’’ she says, almost three decades later. “It’s the fulfilment, really. It's taught me a lot of things: leadership, discipline, resilience, teamwork, it’s given me great self-esteem to know that I’m good at something that I love, and they’re just traits that you can carry through with your everyday life.
“Even today, we’ve got girls who are in their 20s who say ‘oh, Karren, remember you taught us Netta Netball, (as it was before NetSetGO) when we were only eight, and we’re still here and you’re still here’. And you just go ‘oh, my God’.
"So sometimes, yes, it is a bit of a sliding doors moment.’’
As to what netball has meant to Clark: “I think (it's) giving back to a sport that’s just part of my life. I played netball from about eight or nine and I like the fact that you can be involved lifelong.
"So you can be a player, you can be an umpire, you can be a coach, you can be 60 years old and filling any of those roles. I think if you’re coaching it’s the satisfaction of those happy little smiles on their faces. I don’t know, there’s a really warm fuzzy feeling.
“I don’t have a daughter. I played netball, I love the sport, and I’m still involved. I could have just turned my back on it.
“But I can’t. I love it.’’
Written by Linda Pearce
