About us

Lawn Netball Club was started in 1958 by a group of teenagers from Immanuel Youth Centre in Swindon. A match was arranged by one of the leaders with a team from the Swindon League. In the early sixties, Lawn School (now Lawn Manor Academy) was built along the road from Immanuel. The minister arranged for the netball team to transfer their activity to the new school. The club continued to grow and progressed through the divisions of Swindon League, and widened its experience by entering local and regional tournaments. During this time Eileen Witts, by now Secretary, Coach and Umpire, obtained her Immediate Coaching and Umpiring Awards. Club players were now being selected to Junior County Teams. Eileen is now our Club President.

The club was a founder member of the Western League (Now Regional League), together with three other Swindon teams and teams from Bristol and Wales. These teams were later joined by teams from Gloucestershire and the league increased to two divisions. In 1976, under pressure from her daughter, Eileen decided to form a junior section to the Club. Schools in the area were circulated and on the first night, about 40 young girls appeared at the school gym. Some of those original youngsters are still with us.

The junior group was gaining strength as was its counterpart at Pinehurst, so to provide some interest for the two groups, Doreen Willcocks and Eileen formed the Swindon Junior League, at first just one Under 14 section. This league has now grown and has sections for Under 11, 12, 13 and 14 age groups and encouraged other clubs to form their own junior sections. The Club has, because of its beginning, always actively encouraged young players and these continue to progress through to the higher teams.

The Club had players representing the County in all age groups from Under 14 to seniors (Until the structure change in 2006/7). We have had a large number of players represent the Team Bath and Severn Stars Futures teams. Currently Kirsty Harris is playing for Team Bath in the Super League, Kirsty started with Lawn at the age of 7 and is still involved with the club helping with our coaching. We also have had two England Players Mireille Lanney represented England Under 18 and Anna Mayes represented the Under 16’s (Anna was England Head coach and also former Team Bath Super League Coach.)

The Club currently has over 80 members and have four teams competing in Swindon League and 4 teams in the Junior League. We also have an Over 35 team and enter teams into the Summer League. We have a number of Level 2 qualified coaches and some working towards this qualification. We also have C award umpires and Into Officiating qualified Umpires. The club is keen to support anyone wishing to become a qualified coach and/or umpire.

In 2002 we became the first club in the county to receive a prestigious new award, when we were awarded the Silver Caps award (England Netball’s Club Action Planning Scheme). We still currently hold this award that has to be renewed every three years.