New icons and familiar favourites will feature as Netball New Zealand (NNZ) celebrates 100 years in Aotearoa next year with an exhibition at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira.
The first netball association in the world to reach the centenary milestone, NNZ has earned a special place in the country's history, said Jane Groufsky, curator of social history at the museum.
“Looking today at netball, people might not realise just how it came from the hard work, gut and grunt of communities of women,” she said.
“So we're really excited to share that with our visitors, and for them to understand the people and the everyday unsung heroes who made netball what it is today.
“This shows how important the sport is for Aotearoa - how we punch above our weight and how it's really part of our identity as Kiwis.”
Netball NZ chief executive Jennie Wyllie said as well as telling the stories of the past, the ongoing partnership with the Museum meant netball could see the base it had to build on for the future.
“Netball is the original sport for women and girls in this country - it provides incredible pathways for our athletes and so many opportunities from community level right through to high performance,” she said.
“We're really excited to recognise the amazing legacy our sport has, and it's just fascinating to imagine what the next 100 years will bring.”
The exhibition will build on the museum's collection gifted by NNZ 20 years ago, and will also chronicle the huge changes in the sport over the last 100 years.
Groufsky said it was exciting to be able to show how netball had developed over the last couple of decades, and to celebrate new icons alongside familiar favourites.
She said the partnership will mean a better understanding of netball's place in New Zealand history when it opens in September 2024.
“Netball New Zealand are bringing the passion and the expertise and the knowledge. We just really want to be able to activate that and share it with our visitors.
“We know there's a huge fervent community around netball, and we're expecting people are really going to throw themselves behind it - we might get audiences that haven't been in our museum before, and that's really wonderful.”