Worthing and Brighton netball players score thousands for Rockinghorse

The idea for the sponsored shoot-a-thon developed thanks to two sisters from Brighton Girls, Bobbi and Liberty Sancha, who were really missing their training sessions at Pied Piper Netball in Brighton.

They decided to set a challenge to see how many goals they could score in an hour and with the help of their head teacher, Rosie McColl, did a shout out for others students to take part.

Sussex NRG Netball Club in Worthing also got involved and in the end, a total of 45 girls signed up for the shoot-a-thon.

Mum Alex Sancha, who set up a JustGiving page, said: "We have been completely bowled over by the enthusiasm and generosity everyone has shown for our event and the Rockinghorse charity.

"Bobbi was really missing her regular netball training sessions with all her friends at Pied Piper, so we wanted to try to think of how we could get everyone together.

"I was also aware that funding for Rockinghorse had been severely affected due to having so many of their usual events cancelled, so we wanted to try to raise some money in the process.

"Bobbie and Liberty came up with the idea of seeing how many goals everyone could score in an hour and getting sponsorship for each one, so we created a flyer and spoke to the netball clubs and Rosie McColl, the head at Brighton Girls, to see if they could help us get the word out there."

Pied Piper head coach Victoria Lacey set a target of 10,000 goals for the club and offered a £100 donation if this was achieved.

Alex said: "Victoria also set up a Zoom meeting for us all. It was so great to see everyone playing netball and being able to hear everyone shouting out their scores.

"There were some huge scores, most players scoring 300 or more goals, and several players beat the world record - massive congratulations to Saffron (912), Lily (890), Harriet (841),

Lottie (782), Isobel (781), Isabella (747), Yasmine (737) and Lauren (1,050). They scored over 17,000, which is incredible."

Sussex NRG also had some huge scores, including Maisy (949), Lillie (1085) and Grace (1,132).

At Brighton Girls, one student creatively removed the seat from a chair and used the frame as a netball hoop, going on to score more than 400 goals.

Victoria said: "We have been doing regular virtual training sessions for the girls but thought this was a good way to set them a challenge and have some fun. We organised a group Zoom call and off they went.

"We were amazed at how all the girls stepped up, most of them shooting for the whole hour, despite the inevitable cricked necks from looking up so much."

In total, more than 26,000 goals were scored and more than £3,500 was raised.

Ryan Heal, Rockinghorse chief executive, said: "Seeing a local sports club making such an effort to support Rockinghorse is truly inspiring, especially at the moment.

"The resourcefulness shown by Alex in planning, organising and undertaking this shoot-a-thon has blown us away and we can only hope that other clubs follow their lead.”

Visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/netballshootathon to make a donation.

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