University of Exeter Sport are excited to announce the newest appointment to the performance sport team, Laura Rudland. Laura joins us as Head of Netball, working closely with Denise Ellis who will continue to coach within our netball performance programme and partner club (Exeter Netball Club) ahead of the programme’s preseason in August.
Laura has competed in the Netball Superleague for over 7 years, now playing regularly for Celtic Dragons, bringing an abundance of experience to the netball performance programme. Previous to this, Laura played for Team Bath and then Severn Stars before joining the Welsh team. Whilst playing Netball, Laura has gained a depth of knowledge through her previous coaching roles such as Head Coach for the Severn Stars U17 academy and most recently, Lead Coach for performance netball camps for touring sports teams.
Upon starting her new role on August 1st, we caught up with Laura to hear all about her previous netball experience, her aims for the programme and what she’s most excited about ahead of joining Exeter Sport.
- Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your netball career? For the last couple of years, I have been working in Marketing and Communications for a sports charity, taking a break from coaching to give me more time to focus on my playing career. I spent several years before this coaching full-time and leading Netball programmes mainly in schools. I have competed in the Netball Superleague for the last 8 years, starting out at Team Bath where I went to University, Severn Stars and more recently Celtic Dragons where I have spent the last 3 seasons.
- What interested you the most about netball to start playing? I have always loved team sports and used to play a lot of different sports when I was younger. I started playing Netball at school and out of all the sports I was playing at the time I enjoyed Netball the most so joined a club & over time it became my main sport.
- What position do you play? WA/GA
- Who is your sporting hero and why? Steph Wood, I used to get told all the time I was too small to play GA, but then I saw her playing internationally and breaking that stereotype.
- What has inspired you to now go into coaching at the University of Exeter and leading the netball performance programme? I always knew I wanted to go back into coaching, but the timing and the opportunity had to be right. I think it is a really exciting time to be getting involved in the Netball programme at Exeter, over the last few years, in particular, the programme has built massively, and it is becoming a University that has put itself on the map for Netball. It is exciting to be part of that growth and to continue pushing in the right direction.
- What are you most excited about ahead of your position at Exeter? I am excited to meet everyone and to work with people who are passionate about the sport and driving the programme forward but also getting to work with talented and driven players to help them achieve their goals and potential.
- What are your main aims in helping grow our netball performance programme? My main aims are to make Exeter one of the most successful Netball University Programmes in the country but also to get as many students as possible involved in the sport whilst they are at Uni in the hope, they will carry on playing and enjoying the sport in their life beyond Exeter.
We wish Laura the best of luck in her new role and look forward to welcoming her to the Exeter Sport team. We cannot wait to see the growth of the programme over the next season.
You can find out more about our Netball Performance Programme here, or our other performance sports here.