Sam Winders with young players at the Netball Rotorua Centre.
Sam Winders with young players at the Netball Rotorua Centre.
Peter Thornton for LockerRoom
Silver Fern Sam Winders has come full circle in her career. From playing at the highest level, she is now a NetballSmart development officer in Waikato Bay of Plenty helping the next generation.
Sam Winders was in no-man’s land when she came home to NewZealand.
The 47-test Silver Fern had been playing for the Giants in Sydney for the 2024 Suncorp Super Netball season. She spent the last part of the season sitting on the bench, and she came home with renewed focus.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I am no longer cut out for this life of sitting on the bench’. I just want to play, whatever that looks like,” says the 29-year-old from Rotorua.
There were limited spots in the regions she wanted to play, so for the first time in her career, she thought of life outside of netball. Winders was lining up to study a Diploma of Teaching when she got a call from Silver Ferns physio Sharon Kearney.
“Shaz called me and said: ‘There’s a job going at WBOP and I think you should apply’,” says Winders. “I thought ‘why not’. It was the first time I had a proper job interview in years – it felt like my first day at school – but it has all fallen into place and I’m loving it.”
Winders, who attended John Paul College in Rotorua, where she was deputy head girl, is the new NetballSmart development officer for the WBOP region.
“I’m teaching stuff that I am so passionate about, and to a degree, a bit of an expert in. Being able to move well and doing things that make you a better person and a better player,” she says.
“It’s a full-circle moment. Ten years ago, when the NetballSmart warm-up first came out, I was a fresh-faced university student slash netball player. So going from being an ambassador of NetballSmart to now being fully embedded in it and helping the next generation of players is cool.”
In 2024, ACC accepted 23,796 netball-related injuries, which came at a cost of $48 million to help people recover. This was the highest number of netball injuries and cost for the past five years.
Sam Winders is an ideal role model for the netball development programme.
ACC has partnered with Netball NZ since 1997 to deliver NetballSmart. It is the only injury prevention programme to focus solely on improving outcomes for females.
In 2025, the Ferns lead physiotherapist Kearney has driven the revision of the programme. The revised warm-up focuses more on the landing and deceleration components of the warm-up, and it is more game-specific.
Kearney says Winders is an ideal role model for the programme.
“Sam is a hard-working and very competitive player who sustained minimal injuries at an ANZ Premiership, Suncorp Super Netball and international level. She ran hard, decelerated strongly and landed each jump well – no matter how challenging.
“Sam’s ability to share her expertise directly with players on achieving success, integrated with NetballSmart messaging to minimise injury risk, is invaluable.
“That is why Sam was great as a NetballSmart ambassador and now as one of our regional officers – she can help tell the story of what it takes to play netball like she does.”
Winders is focused on developing more young athletes in New Zealand.
ACC data shows that the 10–14 age group (6306 claims) and 15–19 age group (4513) had the most netball-related injuries in 2024.
“We don’t have the depth of athlete that we need,” she says. “Often in netball, we bypass the athlete, and we go, ‘who’s tall, who’s got the physical attributes of being a netball player?’ Let’s pick them.
“So you get to the Silver Ferns and people can’t jump or turn fast or accelerate well or stop efficiently – they just lack those athletic capabilities or may have sustained significant injuries on their journey to the top.
Winders says they want to prevent serious injury, especially for young people. Photo / Rebecca Grunwell
“In the sessions I am leading, we are taking that concept and running with it. We train them to be athletes, embedding in habits early, which gives them freedom to do whatever they want in the game and decrease injury risk.”
Winders says that for young people, they want to prevent a serious injury, like rupturing an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), at all costs.
“I have seen it in my teams, the huge personal cost an injury like that has, it puts everything on hold. And some players, they might not be the same again.
“I grew up here in Rotorua, and we had so many talented players who didn’t make it to the next level. So that is a big drive for me, making sure we are looking after our local players.”
Winders says it’s a special feeling coming away from a team training where the players are fully engaged in learning the NetballSmart dynamic warm-up. She says players who complete the warm-up have up to 50% less chance of injury.
“From the team point of view, the teams who have the fewest number of injuries are generally the most successful as well.”
And Winders hasn’t hung up her bib just yet.
For now, she is playing club netball for Ngongotahā in the Tauranga Premier Competition.
