St. Vincent and the Grenadines is now ranked 17 in the latest World Netball rankings, released on, three places higher than in December 2022.
Natasha Baptiste, president of the SVG Netball Association welcomed the improved ranking, saying:
“This is very good news for netball in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It shows that there are positive results after working hard, but that does not mean we have to relax on the hard work. No team in the region will be taking us lightly as we will not be taking any one of them lightly.”
She said the association will have to continue uplifting the image of netball in SVG through improved administration at all levels, quality training of all clubs and national teams, and with support from corporate partners and the Government of SVG, play as many ranking matches as possible.
Baptiste added that the progress made over the past months did not come easy as there was the need to implement changes to the way things were done, as the SVG Olympic Committee and World Netball continue to demand improved administration of its members.
“The support we received from corporate St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Vincent and the Grenadines Olympic Committee, went a long way in helping us meet our objectives,” Baptiste stated.
“The support from Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves must be commended, which attracted favourable comments from the immediate past president of Americas Netball Mrs. Marva Bernard in October last year, it’s a testimony that when we all work together towards a common objective the results will make us all proud.”
A rating for teams is a measure of their average performance over a series of matches. Each team earns a certain number of points from each international match, and then the points earned are divided by the number of matches played to provide a rating.
The teams are then ranked in order of their rating.
In the current World Rankings, matches played between July 1, 2019 and Feb. 28, 2022 have a weighting of 50%, while matches played since March 2022 have a full weighting of 100%.
Earlier matches are not included in the current ratings.
The annual ranking update took place on march 1, 2022, when 130 matches were played, ma4king the 20-month period July 1, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2022, comparable to the previous 12-month periods.
The next annual update took place 12 months after, on the March 1, 2023.