THE rise of netball in Scotland was further highlighted with the announcement that captain of the national team, Claire Brownie, had been included in the list of the top 20 twenty-somethings living and working in Scotland. Brownie is the only sportswoman on the list which also includes entrepreneurs, musicians, artists and medical professionals and she admits that her inclusion came as something of a surprise to her. “I was really taken aback when the email came through letting me know that I’d been nominated but It’s a great honour,” the 28 year-old said. “There’s so many young people in Scotland who have achieved so much so it’s a privilege to be named alongside them.”

While her nomination is a testament to what Brownie has achieved as captain of Scotland and of Sirens, this country’s first-ever professional netball team, it also highlights the increase in the profile of the sport in recent years. “This shows the impact netball is having in Scotland now – ten years ago, I really don’t think you would have had a netballer player on a list like this so I think it really shows the growth of the sport,” she said. “It also shows that it’s being recognised what Netball Scotland is trying to achieve on a greater scale, not just within our sport but for women’s sport as a whole.”

Brownie is still on a high from the Scottish Thistles performance at Netball Europe just over a week ago, at which they defeated the world number seven and eight teams within the space of a couple of days. With Scotland currently ranked twelfth in the world, their victories over Fiji and Wales were extremely encouraging and Brownie admits to being hugely satisfied that the increased level of professionalism is paying dividends. “We’re really delighted with how we performed at Netball Europe - we achieved some of our best results ever so we can take a lot of confidence from that and we’re aiming to build on that competition going forward. I think a lot of that improvement is to do with exposure – we’ve been competing with some of the top players in the world week in, week out whether that’s been in the Superleague or some of the younger girls were at the under-21 World Championships and so we’ve all brought that into the national team. We’ve also done a lot of work in the gym to get ourselves to get ourselves up to international standard and to allow us to cope with how netball is played these days – it’s so dynamic nowadays so you really need the fitness levels to be able to cope with that.

With a hectic few months coming up, the national team could not be coming into good form at a better time. A test series in December is closely followed by the World Cup qualifiers before they make their assault on the Commonwealth Games in April, for which Brownie has high hopes. “We’ve got a really exciting spell coming up and we’re really pleased how things are going,” she said. “It feels like this is just the start of things though, we feel like we can still get so much better and that really motivates us all as we head into the next six months. Every player in the squad is improving and we’re all pushing each other to get better and that’s paying off for Scottish netball.”