Even though the Saint Lucia Netball Association has had a year of unprecedented success, the team has had to pull out of next month’s Netball World Cup Sydney 2027 Qualifier Americas in Barbados.
The Barbados Netball Association planned to host seven national teams at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex in Wildey, St Michael, from October 19 to 26. However, Sanya Antoine, president of Netball Saint Lucia, told St Lucia Times that the Piton Sparks cannot attend.
“We’ve been going out a lot to corporate Saint Lucia; we’ve not been getting the responses that we were expecting, especially after CAC Games,” she said. “We have a lot of these persons coming out of poor family backgrounds, so it is important that we support them; we are there to support them, whatever they need, their schooling.
“We got promises we thought would have been fulfilled, and they weren’t, and that’s very disappointing. Heartbreaking, actually, for when we had to have the meeting with the team and let them know, because they have been at training.”
Since taking over the local federation in March 2025, Antoine said the executive team had started to regroup. They are planning more domestic competitions, which helped make this summer so successful.
Netball in Saint Lucia is on the rise. The team won the country’s first-ever team sport medal at the Central American & Caribbean Games, earning bronze in Santo Domingo. Saint Lucia also won netball at the Windward Islands School Games for the first time since 2019 and narrowly missed third place at the Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Tournament.
However, Antoine admits there may be a gap between netball and the business community in Saint Lucia. She thanked the companies that have supported netball over the years, but said more needs to be done to raise the sport’s profile.
“We’re speaking about playing more locally, and that’s one of the goals to make the sport more visible,” she said.
“Because if you have somebody coming and investing in something, they would want to see what they’re getting out of it. So at that point, it’s us to build that product; that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Antoine said she is pleased with the work her executive team has done over the past 18 months, including revamping the constitution of the national federation. She cited the need for more local competition as one of her top priorities, but noted that the financial side needed much more attention.
“(For) too long it has been the executive funding the association…” she revealed. “Up to now, we still have monies we owe past presidents because they’ve been taking money from their own pockets to fund stuff.
“We need to get our financing in order. We don’t want to be living hand to mouth. When a tournament comes up, we have to be going there. We want to be sustainable.”
Antoine also pointed out that Team Saint Lucia needs more depth. The bronze medal team at the CAC Games was one of the youngest, and she said that several players would not have been able to go to Barbados. Still, the young leadership team remains determined to help develop a group of young women both on and off the court.
