Leigh Gibbs moves on to a new chapter in her netball career as she finishes at Netball Mainland today.

Leigh has been with Canterbury Netball/Netball Mainland since 2011. During this time she has been the Head Coach of the Tactix and has worked in netball development across the Netball Mainland Zone which stretches across the Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast and Canterbury regions.

Leigh will move to Brisbane to take up a newly created position at Netball Queensland as the General Manager of Community and Sport Development. Leigh will continue to work with volunteers and a new team to grow and development netball in the State, which has also recently received funding for a new netball purpose-built facility.

While Leigh’s playing days started in Gisborne at the age of 9, her senior playing days started in Dunedin while at University. As soon as she moved to Christchurch in 1977 she was selected for the Canterbury team and a year later was selected for her first Silver Ferns team in 1978. She represented Canterbury for nine years until 1986 and the Silver Ferns until 1987. As Silver Fern’s Captain in 1987 she led New Zealand to the world netball title in Glasgow.

Leigh remembers fondly the coaching she received from Cath Brown, Kay O’Reilly and Brenda Rowberry who were all stalwart’s of Canterbury netball (the latter two with the Sacred Heart Old Girls Club) and the influence of Lois Muir on her career as both a player and later coach and mentor.

Having finished playing in 1988, Leigh chose a career in coaching but was also an accredited New Zealand B umpire. She had even received the most promising umpire award by the Christchurch Netball Centre in 1986. She went on to start coaching the Canterbury Representative team, was Head Coach of the Silver Ferns in the mid 1990s and was Silver Fern’s Assistant Coach to Ruth Aitken’s team from 2001-2007 who in 2003 won the world championship against Australia in Jamaica.

She has also coached the Canterbury Flames as they were in the late 1990s. She received a Christchurch Netball Centre Service Award in 1994 and is also a Netball New Zealand Service Award holder.

Leigh has always been a motivator as a player, coach or coordinator. To all aspiring netballers she maintains, ‘Understand why you are involved in the game and be resilient if opportunities don’t come your way. It won’t always happen as you would like it, but as one door shuts, another one opens.’ ‘The hard lessons’, she says ‘are some of the best ones.’

We wish Leigh all the very best in her new role.