Special Recognition Awards

Ms. Cynthia Naidu was Singapore’s first National Captain in 1967, when she led the team in the 3rd World Tournament in Perth, Australia. She then went on to be the National Coach of the Singapore National Team from 1973 to 1986. She took the national team to the World Tournament (as it was called then) in Auckland, New Zealand in 1975, and the first Asian Netball Championship in KL in 1985. She was the Training Manager to the national team for the World Tournament held in Singapore in 1983. Cynthia has been the longest serving national coach for Singapore.

Mr. Roland Goh was an active volunteer for Netball Singapore from 1978 to 2003, a total of 25 years – as an umpire, presenter and panelist where he sat on the umpiring sub-committee. He coordinated all the umpires and the allocations through the years for all the events. He was also Netball Singapore’s Tournament Manager form 1978 to 2003 – the key person in managing all the events for 25 years, including fixtures and results. There used to be 185 active clubs at the peak. He was the ‘fixtures expert’ and can still work them out in his head.

Ms. Vivian de Silva was a National player in 1985 when she played in the 1st Asian Championships, or the Asian Netball Tournament as it was called then. In 1993, she was awarded the Umpiring C Badge when Singapore first adopted the Netball Australia system. In 1996, she was awarded the B badge. She has been involved in training umpires since 1995, and on the Umpiring sub-committee for most of the years to the present. In 1999, she attended the first Asian Umpires Camp and was part of the newly created Asian Umpiring Training Unit (AUTU). In 2001, she obtained the Netball Australia award for coaching and assessing umpires, and for umpire allocation. She has been an Asian Netball Federation certified umpiring panelist, a Netball Singapore umpiring panelist, and she is regularly appointed to all ANF events, Nations Cup and NSL as a panelist from 2004 to the present.

Mr. Goh Seck Tuck founded the Sneaker’s Club in 1993 and has been the driving force of the club until today. It is the largest club in Singapore with many of their members very active in numerous schools as teachers and coaches. He was the coach of the 1994 National 21 & under team that won the Asian Youth Championships – the only time Singapore has won this. He was awarded his umpiring badge in 1999 and was the first A Badge in Singapore. He was also the first Singaporean to umpire at a World Youth Championships. He was a Development Officer in Netball Singapore, a national coach for the Singapore opens team in 1997 and a 21 & under coach again in 2010.

Ms. Kate Carpenter was the National Coach of the Singapore national team from 2004 to 2007 and 2010 to 2012, a total of 7 years. She coached Singapore to the 2005 Asian Championships Gold for the first time in the 20 year history of the event. This led to a resurgence of netball in Singapore. Her team then won the 2012 Asian Championships in Sri Lanka by 1 goal – for only the 2nd time ever. In 2006 and 2007 she coached the team to the Nations Cup Gold medal against PNG and Trinidad & Tobago respectively, and to 2nd place to Fiji (world no 7) in the Nations Cup 2011. In 2006: the National Team qualified for the Commonwealth Games for the first and only time. She led the team in 2 World Netball Championships in 2007 & 2011.