Dame Noeline Taurua, DNZM, for services to netball
Dame Noeline Taurua, DNZM, for services to netball
Dame Noeline Taurua was appointed Head Coach of the Silver Ferns in August 2018 and guided the team to their first Netball World Cup title in 16 years at the 2019 Netball World Cup. Dame Noeline has been a leading domestic coach, having coached the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic from 2002 to 2013. During this time the team won the 2005 and 2006 National Netball Cups and the ANZ Championship in 2012, the only time a New Zealand team has won the former Trans-Tasman competition. She coached the Southern Steel to the semi-finals of the ANZ Championships in 2016, following an unbeaten record in their regular competition. Since 2017 she has coached Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Lightning in Australia, which won the Suncorp Super Netball League in 2017, 2018 and minor premiers 2019. She has a reputation as a coach for fostering an inclusive team environment based on holistic principles, where athletes are willing to work for each other for the collective good, open to learning and comfortable to express themselves and test their abilities. She previously had a representative career, playing 34 tests for New Zealand between 1994 and 1999. As a player she was a member of the team that achieved the Bronze Medal at the 1995 World Netball Championships and the Silver Medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Dame Noeline also represented Wellington in the provincial netball competition earlier in her career.