Six teams to contest Bathurst Netball Association's top grade competition this season

Low numbers in A grade over the past two years saw the top two grades merged together to bolster the competition, before they were split into a top and bottom half over the back half of the season to then play for the A and A reserve titles.

But with six A grade nominations this season it means a merger with the next grade below won't be required for the 2022 season.

Following the completion of grading it was determined that Bulldogs Verdelho, Panthers, Collegians Mystified, Mana, Superstars United and Scots All Saints College will be the six teams making up the top grade for the new season.

Bathurst Netball Association president Tina Muller said it's great to have a solid top grade competition locked in for the new year.

"We did our grading recently and that went fairly smoothly. It was great to see that we had enough players for our A grade so that we didn't have to split our comp, which is something we've had to do over the last two years," she said.

"Last couple of years we've only had four teams in that grade and you can't run a competition with those numbers, so that forced us to combine A1 and A grade. I think that having six there is really exciting."

Although overall numbers are still somewhat down since the initial wave of COVID in 2020 Muller is confident that we'll see plenty of strongly contested divisions throughout winter.

"Still, numbers are a little bit down post-COVID but hopefully we can get those back up over the next couple of years. We're really pushing for better numbers with our younger players, which is another thing we're hoping to get up next season.

"All the grades look good and couple of the grades will be really well contested. All of the A grade teams look really good this year."

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