From shared barbecue to state title: Eaglehawk netball club shows how community bonds are forged on local courts

EAGLEHAWK, VIC, On a cool Saturday morning in late June, the Eaglehawk Netball Club held its annual ‘Come & Try’ day on the newly resurfaced courts at Canterbury Park. More than 60 girls and boys aged five to 15 turned up, double last year’s number, according to club president Angie Thompson, who spoke to The Daily Bendigo after the event.

The surge at Eaglehawk is not an isolated story. Across Bendigo, local sports clubs are reporting stronger membership numbers, longer waiting lists for junior squads and a quiet shift in how families view neighbourhood clubs-not just as places to play, but as hubs for connection.

The resurfacing of the two outdoor netball courts at Canterbury Park was completed in March after a joint funding push from the City of Greater Bendigo and a State Government community sports infrastructure grant worth $87,000. The old asphalt had cracked so badly that players were avoiding the baseline. Now the surface is smooth, re-lined and floodlit by four new LED towers paid for by the club’s own fundraising, about $23,000 raised across two annual trivia nights and a major raffle.

The numbers from Netball Victoria’s 2025 census back up what Thompson sees on the ground. Participation in Bendigo’s association netball programs rose 7% year-on-year, with the biggest jumps in the 9-12 age bracket. At Eaglehawk, the club’s senior A-grade side celebrated its first premiership in 19 years last August, a moment that drew a crowd of nearly 400 to the grand final at Bendigo Stadium.

Eaglehawk’s experience mirrors that of the Bendigo Hockey Club, which spent 18 months raising $115,000 to install a synthetic turf pitch at High Street Reserve. The pitch opened in February 2025 and now hosts five junior teams that didn’t exist three years ago. Club secretary Ben O’Shea told us the club had lost families to Melbourne clubs that had artificial turf; now, he says, they’re the ones getting inquiries from as far away as Castlemaine and Maryborough.

More than just games

Community sports infrastructure does more than produce wins on a scoreboard. It creates predictable, safe meeting points, something that matters deeply in a regional city where public transport can be thin and after-school activities often hinge on a parent’s availability to drive.

When Eaglehawk’s new lights went on in April, the club started an after-school ‘Twilight Netta’ program for children aged 5-8. Sessions run from 4:30 to 5:30 pm on Wednesdays. By the end of Term 2, 34 kids had signed up, 11 of them from families who had never previously been involved with the club. “It’s the same kids who come back every week, and now you see the parents staying for a coffee and a chat,” Thompson said. “That’s the real win.”

What happens next

Both clubs are already planning their next moves. Eaglehawk is in the early stages of a feasibility study, commissioned with a $5,000 grant from the Bendigo Community Health Foundation, into adding a small pavilion with accessible toilets and a kitchenette. The hockey club has applied for a second round of state funding to add a covered spectator bench along the western sideline of the pitch.

Neither project is guaranteed. But the pattern is clear: when a community invests in a place to play, the community gets bigger. And in Bendigo, that’s the kind of win that counts long after a season ends.