IF it wasn’t for the efforts of Christine Melnikas and her mother, Bev, netball in Banyule would look a lot different today.
When Christine was 10 and playing at the Macleod Netball Club, she and her teammates were told it was in danger of folding.
“I put my hand up and said my mum will take it over,” she says. “I’m 52 now and she has been doing it ever since. She knows every player and every parent by name and does everything by hand, she won’t use a computer. She’s just incredible.”
Melnikas says the Macleod club, founded in 1951, was forced to do a lot of travelling to play because of a lack of facilities in the area.
In the late 1990s she received a flyer from Colin Brooks, who was running for local council. It asked what he could do for members of the community and Melnikas, sick of the lengthy travel and increasing petrol bills, wrote back, “Build me a netball stadium”.
She also decided netball in the outer northern suburbs needed a collective voice, and so, with the Macleod Netball Club, formed the Banyule and Districts Netball Association, of which she is the administrator.
Working with the council and Macleod College, the stadium was finally finished in 2003 – thanks to Melnikas’ tireless efforts.
“We got word some of the councillors were going to say ‘no’,” she recalls. “So I grabbed all the young juniors, over 100 of them, took them to the council meeting and sat them on the floor. They couldn’t say no with all the kids watching them.”
These days, the competition is booming. They cater for more than 2000 players, ranging in age from eight to 60, and host matches for clubs from all over the district.
On June 17 they’re hosting a tournament for 51 Victorian clubs in the under-11 to under-15 age bracket, one of three such tournaments they host every year.
They were also recent recipients of a defibrillator as part of St John Ambulance Victoria’s Heart Start program, which aims to raise awareness of cardiac arrests in sport. Melnikas says it provides “peace of mind”, especially as her son is missing his right pulmonary valve.
The matriarch of Banyule netball, she says the sense of family in the sport is phenomenal.
“Mum wasn’t even into sport. Pen and paper suited her down to the ground,” she says. “Parents just want to do things for their kids. Many of our coaches are mums and dads volunteering their time.
“My husband coaches as well. He said, ‘If I ever want to see you I have to be involved’.”
