By RNZ The father of a boy saved from drowning in rapids in Central Otago says the family is filled with gratitude for those who helped in the harrowing.
Anna Harrison (L) defends over Grace Nweke.
Photo: Photosport
The stealthlike defender debuted for the Otago Rebels in 2002 as a 19-year-old in the old national league.
So meteoric was her rise that the West Coast product was part of the Silver Ferns gold medal success at the 2003 Netball World Cup.
In 2006 she won a Commonwealth Games gold medal, something she repeated in 2010 when she returned to netball after a couple of years on the international beach volleyball circuit.
But the closest she s come to winning a domestic title was in 2011 when the Northern Mystics lost to the Queensland Firebirds in the grand final of the old trans-Tasman competition.
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Millie Lees strived to find a balance as both a junior doctor and a Silver Fern. She s now an anaesthetist in a hospital in Manchester – and it s five years since she touched a netball.
Having struggled when their careers ended, a band of former Silver Ferns are committed to helping the next generation of top netballers smoothly transition from professional sport to everyday life. When Silver Fern Millie Lees left netball to pursue her medical career in England, she completely cut ties with the sport she d been smitten with. “When I first got here, I couldn’t watch a game,” Lees (now Poyser) writes from the English city of Manchester, where she’s an anaesthetist on a maternity ward. “I haven’t touched a netball in over five years.