Steel Eyes SEA Games Gold in Land of Smiles with Singapore Netball Squad
- Hana Basir
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Newly appointed Team Singapore Netball Head Coach Tara Steel feels right at home with Singapore Sports Hub’s world-class facilities
This is a feature article written by SportPlus.sg for Kallang Alive Sports Management. For more sports events, programmes and human stories of Singapore Sports Hub, visit the Singapore Sports Hub's 'Here to Play' website.
Inheriting a squad of newly-crowned Asian Netball Champions and uprooting her entire life to a new country, all in the year of the highly-anticipated Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.
It should sound overwhelming. Yet for newly appointed Team Singapore Netball Head Coach and Technical Director Tara Steel, the pressure hardly shows, for the cool-as-you-like Australian smiled warmly each time she spoke about her new squad and their upcoming tests in a pivotal sporting year.
Steel arrived in Singapore to take up her new post with Netball Singapore in late April, and apart from soaking in the sights in her new home, the 39-year-old has also managed to familiarise herself with Singapore Sports Hub. After all, it’s sure to be a place where Steel will create countless memorable moments with the Singapore national team.
“It’s a great facility and I’m so fortunate to be here. The Singapore Sports Institute, the training venues and gyms are world-class,” smiled Steel.
“I was based in Canberra where we had the Australian Institute of Sport so it’s very similar to the training facilities here. The OCBC arena where we train is right alongside the gym where our strength and conditioning is set up. There are also spaces for athletes to have meetings and get together for different things. It’s a convenient hub to have where athletes have everything catered for them. When we host tournaments here, which we’ll have in November, it’ll be exciting to play where we also train.”
Steel won’t have to wait long until she takes courtside for the first time with the Singapore national team. The squad is set to compete in the UAE Nations Cup in June, which will be a stepping stone to see where the team stands ahead of the SEA Games at the end of the year.
While Steel only took to the helm a few weeks ago, the squad has been working on conditioning and basic court skills prior to the arrival of their new coach.
“The UAE Nations Cup will be good for setting a foundation for what’s to come this year, ensuring that our basic skills are exactly where they need to be. My coaching style and my communication with the athletes might be a little different to what they've had, so we’ll also see how to adjust, and not have to change anything too much in terms of the strengths we have as a team. It’s how we enhance that and ensure we keep building,” explained Steel, who took over for New Zealander Annette Bishop after a near five year tenure.
While Steel and the team haven’t quite had the time to come together and decide on their goals to achieve in the Land of Smiles in December, one thing is unspoken.
“The key and primary objective for the tournament itself is ultimately to win gold,” Steel remarked confidently.
“We’ll have a lot of other team goals we’ll work through as we continue to step towards the SEA Games but from my perspective, winning and continuing the success the team has had after winning the Asian Championships last year is objective number one.”
With netball returning to the SEA Games for the first time since 2019, Team Singapore will be eager to bring Southeast Asian glory back to home soil after narrowly losing to rivals, Malaysia that year. The last time the Singaporean anthem was heard after a SEA Games netball final was at none other than OCBC Arena 10 years ago.
For Steel, winning isn’t only something to be checked off a list, but rather a mindset she hopes to ingrain into the athletes under her care—some of whom will be featuring at the games for the first time.
“We have quite a young squad so to get the Asian Championships win last year for that group was huge in terms of confidence and performance. Winning is also a skill and a mindset, so we have to practice achieving it, knowing what it feels like and understanding what you have to do to work hard to get there,” shared the Head Coach.
“We’re very familiar with the fact that Singapore netball hasn't won a medal at SEA Games for a number of years since it doesn't always feature at the games. It’s really exciting to have netball at this year’s edition and in a multisport event like the SEA Games, it’s always great for the athletes and coaches to be a part of.”
Ahead of the Games, forming a connection with her new team tops Steel’s to-do list. With over a decade of experience coaching with the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Steel is all too familiar with how off-the-court wellbeing impacts match performance.
Netball is the most played sport amongst women in Australia and its high-performance athletes are full-time, a stark difference compared to being a high-performance netball athlete in Singapore.
A big believer in health and wellbeing off the court as a vehicle for performance, Steel hopes to have a positive impact on the mental welfare of her athletes here, who often juggle netball alongside another full-time career or studies.
“In the Australian system at an elite level, the athletes are full-time paid professionals. Here, training is something they do after hours. The programs that I’ve been coaching in the ACT are of a similar nature so I have that experience as a coach,” explained Steel.
“We’ve got a big year with some key tournaments. We have to ensure we keep improving the base level of what we’re doing at every tournament. As a coach, it's important that I motivate and inspire our athletes to be high performance in their mindset, even when they’re away from the court. They’re not full-time athletes so to ensure we can get the best performance on the court, their health and wellbeing off the court is really key in achieving that.”
Team Singapore netball, nicknamed The Vandas, are currently on a high, having won the 13th Asian Netball Championships in October last year. The confidence that came with winning and earning themselves the title of continental champions is one that Steel values, and knows will also play a big part on the path towards the long-awaited gold medal.
Steel emphasised on the need for her to fast-track her understanding of the players and what contributed to the Asian Championships success, gushing at the team’s breakthrough and their ability to achieve their goals through their grit and gameplay last October.
The highly-experienced coach knows all too well though, that success also makes you a target.
And that means that ahead of the highly-competitive SEA Games, rival countries will be watching and looking at how to break down The Vandas.
“We have to be strong in the foundation we’ve set—our ball speed and our foot speed. Some of the opponents that we’ll match up against are a lot taller than us and have different physical attributes. We’ll have to utilise our strengths to our advantage and connect as different units tactically and technically on court to exploit other teams with our strengths,” she shared.
Steel, who is passionate about developing pathways within the youth sides towards the senior national team, hopes that having netball in the SEA Games and being victorious will have its impact across the nation.
“As a sports fan, it’s really exciting to be part of something like the SEA Games. For us as a netball program, we have to see how we can utilise being at the SEA Games to help inspire the next generation of athletes to take up netball.” #SEAGames2025 #NetballSG #TeamSG