ON TO IT: Tina Arlidge has mapped and monitored the growth of netball in Hawke's Bay since the 2012 merger. PHOTO/Duncan Brown
FEEL free to stick a label of "conviction", "confidence" or even "egotistical" next to the name of Tina Arlidge, if you are so inclined.
The reality is Arlidge didn't just hedge her bets on whether netball has what it takes to be among the front runners in Hawke's Bay sport because she was dead certain it was do-able.
The successful merger of four parochial netball centres in the province was always going to be, like it or not, a snapshot of whether the Hastings and Napier cities were going to bury the hatchet in working as one.
It's history now that Arlidge's adopted baby in 2012 has been weaned into a cloned "Dolly the Sheep" of sorts while the twin cities have fallen by the wayside in finding common ground.
"I don't think I was shocked because I always tend to think a little bigger than probably other people would," says the 42-year-old operations manager, who has been at the helm since the inception of Hawke's Bay Netball.
She endured the bulk of the labour pains to woo Central Hawke's Bay, Hastings, Napier and Wairoa centres under one umbrella four years ago.
Aware that the two main centres of Hastings and Napier were polarised in those days, she reconciled that with a sense of entering a fresh frontier on the platform of neutrality, as opposed to someone who has a personal agenda to push.
"I always thought of what's best for Hawke's Bay. Although I played for Napier netball, I didn't sit on a committee or anything like that."
But what hit Arlidge, like a cold snap from the south, was Wairoa's reluctance to join the matrix.
She didn't flinch, though. She simply took it in her stride.
"Partly I don't think they understood. They thought they were going to lose their identity as an area so my focus in the following year was to get them on board."
Arlidge attributes the progress with Wairoa to Sport Hawke's Bay, rather than what HB Netball did.
"Obviously there was a lot of history in all the centres and having volunteers for all those years.
"Then we suddenly shifted to where we were going to have paid staff and people who might not have been involved, so there was all this patch protection and stuff going on."
But eventually managing to get everyone dipping from the same punch bowl set, as it were, didn't necessarily alleviate fears of a disenchanted centre peeling off to create a splinter group amid the impending flurry of changes mooted.
"We managed to keep everyone happy and, as long as we keep doing a good job to create really good competitions, we'll be fine."
In the gestation phase, there were times when the media highlighted some of the caustic reaction towards striving for their goal but, touch wood, she reckons they have had it pretty good so far from detractors.
The HB Regional Sports Park venue in Hastings has been a revelation despite some initial resistance from pockets of the community.
"It's like it never happened. That was more in the first year but we still get the odd thing about moving from Sylvan Rd [Hastings].
"A lot of that is from people who have not been informed but the sports park has been growing next door," she says, disclosing the construction works will be completed by the end of this month.
Visitors who arrive at the sports park offer glowing tributes to the facilities, although the Onekawa courts in Napier are still used, to some extent.
"It's not until you go to a tournament somewhere else that you realise how good our courts and facilities are."
Arlidge was education team leader at Sport HB for eight years.
Before that, she was a teacher at St Joseph's Maori Girls' College in Napier.
Born in Sydney, she grew up in a livestock farming family in Whanawhana, off the Napier/Taihape road.
The former Taradale High School pupil has been a competitive social netballer all her life and coached primary and secondary school teams.
She played from primary school age, just so she could she could hang out with mates and have fun.
"I still play today in the over-40s competition that Hawke's Bay Netball has implemented," she says, engaging in the indoor, week-night games and enjoying a social drink afterwards.
Motor cross fuelled her competitive energy from the time she was a 26-year-old when, in the course of five years, she became the country's third-best rider in the women's grade.
Her stint with Sport HB, which enabled her to work alongside the now defunct Eastern Netball, gave her a great insight into what made the code tick.
It helped that she was co-opted on to the netball board in November 2012 when the amalgamation objectives were mooted.
Arlidge threw her hat into the ring and stepped down from the board, which, after an interview and due process, rubber stamped her appointment as operations manager.
"I guess I had worked with a whole lot of different sports so I knew what worked well and what didn't," she says when asked what made her a credible candidate.
Her ability to listen to the different netball centres and work with them gave her invaluable insight.
Former Sport HB chief executive Colin Stone's nous was instrumental in helping build a template.
"He was a great mentor through that period. Moving on we already had relationships with netball people so, coming in, I thought it was a huge challenge and exciting to help pull them all in together and make it work."
Picking up on New Zealand Netball initiatives, such as national tournaments, also endorsed the Bay public's faith in what the five members of staff do.
Three of the staff members - business administrator Helga Lewis, development officer Denise Aiolupotea and herself - are fulltime employees while Tracy Crichton and Natalie Corbett are part-timers who were added on to look after juniors and officials, respectively.
While she envisages growth in the organisation's staff, she tempers that with the need for funds to sustain that.
"Obviously there's quite a lot to learn from all these roles so, if we can keep good quality staff, it'll help."
Netball still relies heavily on volunteers, something that is inevitable to cater for 7000 players' needs weekly during the season.
"The volunteers are mainly our coaches and officials but we couldn't do what we do if they didn't do what they do," she says, also saluting the six-member board's input. At November's AGM, two more will be added to bolster that governance.
On the back wall of her makeshift office hang three consecutive Bay sport awards (2013-15) acknowledging netball as the most dominant code with youngsters in terms of numbers.
"It's really satisfying but, I guess to me, it was all really common sense and not rocket science or anything."
Modestly, Arlidge pays tribute to all those people who did the ground work before her tenure, especially inaugural board chairwoman Heidi Oliver.
"She was an integral part of forming HB Netball and bringing in Hastings," she says while revealing Oliver had stepped down from the board due to family issues recently.
Arlidge never doubted the amalgamation was going to succeed.
"I know I did but it is also about sustaining it year to year. We don't want someone to leave and it just falls over so it's about continuing the quality of what we're delivering."
HB Netball has doubled its grant funding compared with previous years.
"I guess we've proved ourselves that we're here and we're a good organisation to fund."
While it's a given that half the population anywhere embraces someone's mother, sister or daughter, Arlidge appreciates that funding agents have been kind to the code.
"We never want to rely too much on grant funding but it has enabled us to do a few things, rather than it being the key to the gulf that we have."
Generally her goal is to boost sponsorship for an underfunded code.
"If you compared the sponsorship of someone like rugby to us, it's an area we want to [exploit]."
She has two sons, Jamie, 24, and Max, 18, and with her partner, Mike, also has two stepchildren, Logan, 16, and Caitlyn, 13.
While they are independent, she averages around 60 hours a week in a 40-hour position.
That also doesn't surprise her either and she accepts it comes with the territory that makes her the administrative face of netball.
"Like anyone knows in sport, you're not in it to make a million dollars."