As the Head Coach of the New Zealand Secondary Schools Netball Team, Jo Morrison plays a key role in developing the nation’s future players.
NetballSmart is a resource she uses to improve performance and prevent injuries in young players.
“Your greatest ability, is your availability,” says Morrison. “I didn't come up with the phrase, but I love it.”
“If you’re doing all of the right things and looking after yourself off the court, you're available to us on the court.”
In 2025, ACC accepted 23,701 netball related injuries, which came at a cost of $51 million to help people recover.
NetballSmart, developed by ACC and Netball New Zealand, is a free resource with a range of strategies to help prepare players to take the court and decrease their injury risk. It covers warm-up, cool down and recovery, skill and technique development, training load, wellbeing, and injury management.
“As coaches, we want players that can consistently step up.
“Everyone can turn up to netball and have a good training session or game, but to do that consistently, you've got to be able to build your body, fuel it correctly, recover, and go, and go again.”
It’s all the little things you do away from training and games that contribute to the big wins, says Morrison.
“It’s about doing the basics and doing them well, consistently, repeatedly, under pressure and fatigue.
“NetballSmart gives you all the big rocks - the sleep, the recovery, the hydration, and the nutrition.”
One area Morrison is focused on as a coach is developing an athlete voice in her young players.
“It’s educating players about their load and what’s going to be best for them in the long-term.
“If you just keep saying yes to everything, you’ll get burnt out. An athlete voice is having the confidence to have those conversations with your coaches, parents, school, and all the people who are influencing you.”
This is particularly important in secondary school age groups, says Morrison.
“They’re navigating so many things, juggling other sports practices, exams, you can't overload them.
“I try and be really clear in my communication and try to keep it simple. It's a simple game, so keeping the language clear and concise.”
Selection for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Netball team starts with three development camps across the country in January.
NetballSmart plays a massive role in these camps, says Morrison.
“We do what we call a warrant of fitness where each player completes strength testing and then performance benchmarking, which gives us an understanding of each players aerobic capacity and jump strength.”
“Everything is relatable to moving on court and gives us a really good picture of a player’s physical capacity.”
From the 90 athletes at camp, 24 are invited to attend trials in April. A team of 14 are then selected for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Team to travel to Australia to play the Under 17 Australian side in July.
“It's pretty cool for the players who get that experience and exposure, but we keep across what all the other players are doing in the secondary schools space.”
NetballSmart removes many of the barriers some young players face, says Morrison.
“We know some of our best Silver Ferns have come from country schools and from the little nooks and crannies of New Zealand.”
NetballSmart is online, it’s free, and it’s fed to a wide audience, says Morrison.
“It’s gives us the ability to educate all players and reach far beyond just the 90 that make secondary schools camp.
“You don't have to go to an expensive gym or school - you can access NetballSmart from anywhere, do it from wherever you may be.”
The success of the programme speaks for itself, says Morrison.
“We introduced the NetballSmart warm-up many years ago. Now, you can go to any netball centre in New Zealand and you'll see every team do it.
“The movements have become part and parcel of what you do.”
A study published by the British Medical Journal in 2008 found that teams performing this warm up at least twice a week had 37 percent fewer training injuries and 29 percent fewer game injuries. Severe injuries reduced by almost 50 percent.
Morrison grew up in Motueka, a small town at the top of the South Island.
Through the support of her family and coaches she represented New Zealand at the highest level, making the Silver Ferns national netball side in 1997. Some of her career highlights include winning a silver medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, playing internationally for England, and playing in the National Bank Cup (now called the ANZ Championship, New Zealand’s top level netball league).
She was fortunate to go her whole playing career without sustaining too many injuries. However, an ankle injury did open a pathway into coaching for her.
“An opportunity to be an assistant coach with the Otago team came up and that was my first big opportunity to coach at that level.
“It kept me in the game through my injury. I went back and played after that, but that opportunity certainly gave me a taste for coaching.”
Morrison has coached a number of secondary school teams, worked in development officer and other specialist roles within netball, coached the Southern Blast and the Southern Steel, and was an assistant coach for New Zealand Secondary Schools before taking on the head coaching role last year.
“I've been super lucky with all the opportunities I've had, but I've also worked really hard to refine my skillset and my understanding of the system.
“I think that's probably one of my strengths, I understand the system, so I really work hard at trying to educate the players on what it takes to take that next step, no matter what that level might be.”
Morrison is based in Dunedin and balances her coaching role, with relief teaching, and coach facilitator roles with Netball South and Sport Otago, as well as being a mum to four sporty teenagers.
“It is busy, but it fits in beautifully with what we're trying to message to the players around self-management and being really well organised and having your time planned out.”