From a farm girl in Matamata, Shirley Hooper has risen to vice president of a new-look World Netball. She tells Suzanne McFadden of her plans to give more women around the globe opportunities through the sport.
By her own admission, Shirley Hooper wasn’t a stellar netballer.
But she was smart. As a 14-year-old she watched with envy as her best friend (who’d later play for New Zealand A) went away on bus trips with the Matamata College netball and rugby teams.
“I was miffed at missing out,” she says. “So I started umpiring, and that allowed me to go, too.
“Netball has always been that thread that’s led to wonderful opportunities in my life.”
It was the start of a lifelong relationship with netball, that she’s deftly woven in with the other strands of her life – a marketing career, sports governance, synchronised swimming and raising a family.
Now it’s taken her all the way to a role as vice president of World Netball.
“It’s a big honour. More than anything, it’s a chance to keep giving back to netball, and to still be connected in a way that’s wider than just New Zealand,” says Hooper, who lives in the Bay of Plenty.
“That’s what I love most about netball - the opportunities it gives women.
“And what I’ve come to better understand on the world netball stage are the opportunities it gives women in so many countries to be empowered and to lead. That it’s not just about the elite end of the game.”
It’s something Hooper – a mother of two adult daughters - has seen first-hand. She's spent the past four years on netball’s international board (it was the International Netball Federation until last month when they gave it a snazzy rebrand to World Netball), before being elected as vice president at the weekend.
At the same congress meeting, past Silver Ferns coaches Yvonne Willering and Ruth Aitken received World Netball service awards for their contribution to the game.
Hooper has had a major influence on guiding the game in the right direction – here and internationally – for over three decades. But if you haven’t heard her name, it’s because she’s been happy to fly under the radar for most of her long and diverse career.
After school, Hooper continued umpiring for a while and, at 18, became one of the youngest umpires to receive her New Zealand badge, whistling at national tournaments.
She crossed paths with netball again as the marketing manager at Bendon in the late 1980s – when she oversaw the sponsorship deal for the national netball league. At the time, it was the biggest sponsorship for any female sport in New Zealand.
Then at TVNZ, where she was head of marketing, she continued the push to get more eyeballs watching netball on television and more advertisers supporting it. “New Zealand was the first country in the world to make a commitment to broadcasting netball – introducing new audiences and supporters at a pivotal time for the sport,” she says.
She moved into netball governance, chairing Auckland Waitakere netball and the franchises of the Auckland Diamonds and the Northern Mystics, before helping get the Northern Stars off the ground. And she was also a director, then chair of Trans Tasman Netball, the joint venture between Australia and New Zealand to run the ANZ Championships – fraught with its own unique challenges.
She spent nine years on the Netball New Zealand board, before she was elected on to the INF in 2017.
Hooper was voted on to bring more commercial nous to the world board.
“A lot of the regional directors have real strengths in the growth of the game, with so much mana and respect from their full involvement in netball from the grassroots up,” Hooper says.
“While I have that to a degree, it’s probably the commercial skills I bring from my professional career that were attractive, having been involved in broadcasting, in sponsorship and franchises.”
Growing the sport’s revenue is an area where progress has been made during her first tenure, Hooper says, but there’s still some way to go.
“By rebranding and repositioning netball, we’re taking a new message to the commercial world,” she says.
“We hoped, pre-Covid, to unlock more commercial dollars for the game. But Covid has derailed some of those plans, so it feels like unfinished business for me.
“We face the same challenge here in New Zealand. We’re different to cricket, rugby and football, which all started as men’s sports, and can bring the funds they generate from that part of the game to support the emerging women’s game. Given the number of household shoppers who love, play and watch the game, netball should attract significantly more commercial revenue than it does.
“At an international level, we only talk to sponsors once every four years around a World Cup. It’s important we find ways to give sponsors the ability to engage with our audiences all the time.”
Netball NZ CEO Jennie Wyllie sang Hooper's praises yesterday, highlighting her commercial acumen and strategic vision, while pointing out she has a lot more arrows in her quiver to make change in the game.
“The most significant attributes that Shirley brings are her ability to engage and collaborate across all stakeholders with warmth and empathy," Wyllie says. "She has a unique ability to connect us, irrespective of our culture, background or experience."
World Netball has a new strategy – ‘To grow, to play, to inspire’. At last count, there were over 20 million involved in netball in over 80 countries.
“I’d love to have more world reach,” Hooper says. “To get netball into as many countries as we can, at whatever level is right for that country. In some, netball will just be participation; but in others, it will be bigger.”
Before Covid, the code was thriving. Netball in Africa, especially, was booming; in the current world rankings, African nations fill five of the top 15 spots. “You have to admire the women who drive netball in those countries – it’s amazing what they achieve with so little resources,” Hooper says.
The sport has made inroads into South America, after one of UK Sport’s legacy projects from hosting the 2019 World Cup was to set up netball in Argentina.
“There are two women who have driven the growth in Argentina and are now reaching into other parts of South America in a very clever way,” Hooper says.
“Now we need to keep driving new initiatives in the sport.” Like filtering the Fast5 game down from the elite ranks to grassroots.
Fast5 could, in fact, be the answer to finally getting netball into the Olympics - a goal embedded in World Netball’s constitution.
It seems the sport’s biggest opportunity is to break in on the back of the host nation.
“With Brisbane looking odds-on favourite to be 2032 Olympic host, we’re starting to work with Netball Australia to figure out a way forward,” Hooper says.
“It will be a great sport for Australia to bring to the party, but we have to be cognisant of the IOC’s rules on how many people play the sport, and on gender equity.”
Which brings us to the subject of men’s netball. The men’s game has yet to be recognised by World Netball, but it’s a challenge that’s being addressed, Hooper says.
“We’re talking to the men about their world championships, but we have limited resources. It’s about what we can do with those resources, in a way that doesn’t disempower women,” she says.
“In many of our countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, netball is the only opportunity that women get to lead, to shine outside a male environment. So how do we encourage the participation of men in the game - which is a no-brainer - while protecting those leadership and empowerment opportunities for women?”
As it has with everything, Covid-19 has reverberated through netball.
For one, it’s changed the way World Netball comes together. Obviously, the directors now can’t fly around the world to meetings three times a year, so they meet on Zoom every month.
Hooper can cope with the 11pm starts (and 3am finishes). But she misses the dynamics of meeting face-to-face with a multicultural board. “You miss the opportunity to sit down and shoot the breeze, because that’s where you can often break down barriers,” she says.
The pandemic has had a massive impact on international netball. In 2019, there were 111 test matches played around the world. Last year there were 14.
“This year we’re up to 18 so far,” says Hooper. “It’s coming back slowly. But it brings challenges for our ranking system.”
The qualification period for next year’s Commonwealth Games has been pushed out to January to allow more nations to return to test netball. While the game is virtually back to normal here, England have eased their way back on to the court with new regulations - balls and hands must be sanitised every 15 minutes, bibs can’t be shared, there are no quarter-time huddles and no shouting or cheering.
Cancelling this year’s World Youth Cup in Fiji – after it was initially postponed - was a tough decision for World Netball, Hooper says, but the right one.
But she worries about the flow-on effect: “There will be a cohort of young players who won’t have had the opportunity to play in that condensed, multi-nation netball environment to really push each other.”
There have been the odd blessings – including a lot more collaboration across continents. Netball Europe and Americas Netball have been sharing umpire development courses, training up young umpires via Zoom.
Hooper has been involved in establishing the World Netball Foundation, to source funding for development programmes in fledgling netball nations, like Argentina.
“One of the first initiatives we’re working on is a leadership programme bringing together leaders from all over the netball world to learn and share with each other,” Hooper says. “Our other mission is to unlock some NGO [non-governmental organisation] funding – we know from the work Netball New Zealand has been doing in the Pacific how much it can help with health and positive family outcomes.”
Hooper can completely relate to small nations trying to build their sport with limited resources. She’s also the chair of Artistic Swimming NZ (the sport formerly known as synchronised swimming), where athletes and their parents bear most of the brunt of funding.
“But the real joy of it is because you’re a much smaller sport, you’re closer to seeing the difference it makes on individual lives,” she says.
“We are a minnow in the sporting world, but we’re a minnow with aspirations. We almost got to the Tokyo Olympics – I’m sure our time will come.” Hooper’s youngest daughter, Eva Morris, is team captain of the Aquaferns.
Even with her two sporting roles, Hooper continues her marketing career, 20 hours a week, most of it working with retirement villages. “It exercises my brain – it’s a really interesting sector, full of growth and opportunities,” she says.
“It’s a nice mix with sport, which gives you that genuine feeling of empowerment – that you’re making a difference in people’s lives.”
- Declaration: the author and Shirley Hooper are second cousins.
