Chelsea Lane keeps a notebook beside her bed, scribbling down the 3am flashes of insight that come to her for the Silver Ferns.
The ideas might not survive in the light of day, but Lane is convinced it shows how much she suddenly cares about netball – a sport she’s never played or had anything to do with before this year.
“I’m really surprised by this – I’m now obsessed with the Silver Ferns,” she says. “I think it’s a healthy obsession, though.”
Lane is in the business of humans. She’s made a hugely successful career out of working with elite sports teams – most notably the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks – melding together sports science, wellbeing and performance leadership.
As head of performance for the Silver Ferns ahead of July’s Commonwealth Games, Lane claims it’s one of the most challenging jobs she’s had. Life-changing, even.
After the “mess” that unravelled at the top of the sport last year – when the Silver Ferns coach stood down and relationships splintered throughout the game – Lane was brought in “to help steady the waka”, as she puts it.
“I’ve done some really gnarly roles with really gnarly challenges. And there’s not a day I don’t have to bring all of my skillset to the table for this particular role – and I’m not sure I saw that coming,” she says. “I will invariably fail multiple times a day, but it’s still good for me.”
Lane speaks with reinstated Silver Ferns head coach Noeline Taurua multiple times a day. “I’ve never used so many words in a week. I get to Friday night and say to my husband, ‘I hope you weren’t hoping for a chat’,” she laughs. She’s married to Kiwi Matt Dallow, at two-time Winter Olympian bobsledder and athletics coach.
Having worked with basketball greats like Warriors coach Steve Kerr, Lane reckons she’s taking as much from Taurua as she’s giving.
“I’m learning a massive amount from her,” Lane says. “She can draw back and pull in – watching the pattern play out. I’ve enjoyed that in other head coaches as well.
“But you turn up with your running shoes on because you have to keep up with her.”
Lane, who works from her home in Auckland’s northwest, has yet to meet the Silver Ferns. That’s been challenging in itself – learning about players scattered across two countries, while also helping to rebuild trust.
And it’s not only the players, but team management too, caught up in the acrimonious saga that saw Taurua stood down for two months after concerns were raised by some squad members about the team environment almost a year ago.
“There’s been such a diversity of hurt, of trauma, and of perspective, and there’s no one conversation that scoops up everyone’s experience and everyone’s need to come out okay,” Lane says.
“I don’t for a second imagine we’ve close to finishing the ‘humaning’ that’s required to unpack it all. It’s been hours a day on the phone, in emails and text – being constantly available to them.
“It’s been undeniably challenging not knowing the sport and coming in off the back of some pretty messy things – a lot of grey zone and emotion, hurt and trauma in that space. We’ve spent a lot of time understanding how we got here, how we get out of here and how we stay out of here.”
Lane’s role doesn’t replace that of former head of high performance Stephen Hotter, who resigned in December. It’s a short-term contract, created to help the Silver Ferns through to the end of the Commonwealth Games campaign – where the goal is to better the bronze they won four years ago.
After “impassioned conversations with some really serious life member netties”, Lane felt she could help.
She hadn’t been across what had happened with Taurua. “I saw what was starting to play out in the media and thought, ‘This is making me angry – I’m not going to watch this’,” she says. “Then I got a call from some life members in the high performance space, and the passion they had for their sport left me shook.
“I’d never had a connection to netball, but I felt the intensity, love and passion for their sport, and the heartbreak and grief they were experiencing. Every single person I’ve collaborated with in the sport has that same passion – that’s what’s been life-changing.
“I’m a steady set of hands to help stabilise the waka. There were troubled seas and I’ve brought some external perspective.”
Lane is renowned for implementing performance systems centred on athletes – caring for their wellbeing while getting the best out of them on court. She emphasises she’s not trying to make the Silver Ferns great – the quality and the legacy, she says, were already there.
“My job is to facilitate that greatness and allow it to be expressed. Sometimes it just needs little polishing, organising and pushing; reminding people and reconnecting them to the confidence that they are great,” she says.
Lane knew little of the Ferns’ “greatness” before she joined the team at the start of the year, alongside interim CEO Jane Patterson.
“One of the things I’ve learned from Noels is the legacy of the Silver Ferns and the mana of the black dress. It’s not my sport, it’s not my country. I’m Australian by birth, Kiwi by adoption,” she says.
Growing up in Australia, she didn’t play netball: “If you pass me a netball, it’ll just bounce off my face.” She was a swimmer with Olympic aspirations she never quite met – but figured she could work with Olympians as a physio instead.
After moving to New Zealand in the early 2000s, Lane worked as a performance therapist with High Performance Sport New Zealand, before being invited to join the Golden State Warriors in 2015. There, she became the first woman in NBA history to lead an NBA performance and medical team.
After winning two NBA championship rings, Lane was headhunted by the struggling Atlanta Hawks, rebuilding their performance programme so they became a top-three NBA team within three seasons. She was then elevated to a vice president role.
While she draws on her NBA experience, she stresses netball has more differences than similarities.
“We’d probably lose daylight if I made a list of the reasons they’re not alike,” she laughs. “But like basketball, netball has this strong whakapapa and legacy, and both sports are at risk of being bound by their legacy rather than fortified by it. Being stuck in what the history was versus how it allows us to write the next chapter.”
Lane faces a short timeframe to start that new chapter with the Ferns. She won’t get to work face-to-face with the team until a three-day camp in Auckland in early July, before they leave for six days in Manchester. Their first game against Scotland in Glasgow is July 25.
When the players assemble, Lane says, they’ll be reassured their voices are heard before change begins.
“The generosity and vulnerability the players have shown to allow us to ‘human’ have been second-to-none,” she says.
“Until you’ve been through the fire you can’t understand how you can experience trauma or distress, confusion or hurt. To then trust again and be vulnerable really shows their passion and connection to the black dress. They also want performance outcomes and they’re owning that.”
Taurua, Lane says, has approached their relationship with the same generosity and vulnerability.
“When I came into the space, I was still navigating what my purpose would be – it was a moving feast,” she says. “Noels was coming back in and finding her feet, so we’ve had to learn about each other at an accelerated pace. Now we’ve hit our stride we can enjoy that working relationship and grow things out of it.”
Lane knows the Commonwealth Games environment – she went to Delhi in 2010 as a physio in the New Zealand team’s medical pool.
“I had a much stronger Aussie accent in those days, and learning the haka I was like, ‘You guys have seen my passport, are you sure I’m allowed to?’ But it was another way to serve sport,” she says.
“This is a totally different experience again for me; learning how to serve in this environment has been a steep curve.”
Lane and her husband are now settled in New Zealand, after returning from the US in 2021 on a six-month sabbatical – and then couldn’t leave.
She’s finally found her ideal work-life balance. Last weekend, she ate fish and chips on Takapuna Beach then had her first – and possibly last – surfing lesson at Muriwai, tackling her fear of the ocean. “And then I get to work in a high performance environment where I can make a difference,” she says.
As a high performance sport consultant, Lane also works with sprinter Zoe Hobbs and Black Caps bowler Kyle Jamieson. “I’m popping in and out of all sorts of sports,” she says. “I’ve found a similar theme: people are generous with their understanding of my ignorance, and they’re willing to help me help them.”
The Silver Ferns go into the Commonwealth Games ranked No.2 in the world, having beaten Australia, England and South Africa in the past 12 months. A gold medal – to go with the titles they won in 2006 and 2010 – is within their reach.
“The goal they’ve set is aspirational, but there’s absolutely no guarantee,” Lane says. “They need the space to be brave enough to fail… because if they have that freedom, that’s when they hit their X factor, when they reach and they push, come hell or high water.
“They need the nation’s support – and I don’t think the nation can love them unconditionally yet. But that’s what fandom is. It’s not about believing in them, it’s believing they are valuable enough to us, no matter what medal they wear around their neck, they’re our national team and we back them. That’s the most important thing we can do for them.
“The mess isn’t the identity of the Silver Ferns – it’s one page in an anthology. Now they’re free to write the next chapter.”
