Mixing Business with Pleasure!

The background and why netball!
A few years ago, I had realised that my business was taking off, I’d had one of my children, I was very happy at home but I was missing something. Having moved away from my hometown when I was younger and the village we now live in being rather quiet, I didn’t have many people to spend my spare time with, not that there was much of it! I decided I wanted to get my fitness back and looked into different ways to achieve this. Looking into a number of sports such as swimming, attending a gym and running, I realised that being the sociable person I am, I was better suited to a sport, and having always played netball at school, I looked to see if there were any local clubs. It was great to see that there was and with my shiny new trainers, I talked myself into taking that first daunting step through the door one training night. I didn’t know anyone, hadn’t played for years and even as a confident person, it is daunting walking into a team atmosphere with no idea what to expect. Nevertheless, I did it, and have never looked back.

At Ashby Netball, I was immediately welcomed, thrown a bib to wear and a position to play in, so the team could assess where I would fit in best. I jumped at the chance and played my heart out that first half hour and whilst I wasn’t the fittest, having just had a baby (ok so not even close as I was literally nearly sick!), I was keen to impress and try and become one of the team members and get invited back at the very least. Fast forward 5 years and I now play Centre and often knock up 4 matches for the 3 teams I play for in one week! I am also a qualified umpire and I can honestly say it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I have made some lifelong friends along the way and my life has just basically become complete, I have some ‘me’ time, the drive to get fitter, faster and stronger and I have a social group who have become very good friends. It is because of this that I am now a keen recruiter of players into our club and the chair of the league and even within my workplace I have recruited 4 full time staff members and 6 casual staff members who are all from my little netball world, so I feel I’m doing my bit to support recruitment in the local community also!

So back to the point of this story…. Work and pleasure….. I own and run a company called Saffron Catering and coincidently there are lots of netball players in our business amongst the 50 staff I employ and it’s become a standing joke between the non netball players within our team that the topic of netball is banned at work. This doesn’t stop us enjoying the banter and the chats about our sport, thoughts on the matches, league positions, how we can improve, get better, win! Many of us play for different clubs and teams and the ethos of teamwork, playing to win, success and pushing the boundaries cross between our work and our sport. In business, my team strive to succeed, we make brave decisions, take risk, in Netball, we are committed, driven, we work hard and play hard! To demonstrate this perfectly I am now about to enter a full team into the Workplace Challenge Tournament due to be held on 26th April, I am so lucky that I have enough people within my business to enter a full Saffron Catering team of capable, experienced netballers! Talk about mixing business with pleasure! What better way to improve staff morale than to team it up in a tournament! Even the non players are coming along to cheers us on, we always need water boys/girls and our Chefs would look great as cheer leaders!

As I write this blog I can only dream of what it would mean to my team to win, its not a priority for us, it’s the taking part, (said with a snigger) but I’m sure even the least competitive people in the world have a little think of what it would be like to lift that trophy (I don’t even know if there is a trophy but you get the point)… keep your eyes peeled for my next blog and I’ll let you know how we get on. Who says work and pleasure shouldn’t mix…..