An Albury Barkindji woman is hoping to encourage Indigenous girls to overcome racism and take up netball to improve their long term health outcomes.
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Murray Magpies netballer Jordan Morgan coached a NAIDOC week junior Indigenous netball session on Monday at the Wodonga Sports and Leisure Centre.
The goal shooter said it was harder for Aboriginal girls to feel confident and a sense of belonging playing netball if they were the only dark skinned person on the court.
"When you have darker skin a lot of people tend to be able to pick on you more," she said.
"When I first started netball it was actually with a lot of my cousins.
"Sometimes we'd play teams and you'd see their expressions on their faces and you'd just know they didn't want to be playing with us.
"That kind of made it hard for a lot of my cousins to keep playing.
"It's not something I really thought about at the time, but looking back it's like yeah, that did happen and it really shouldn't have."
Ms Morgan said she hoped running the session would help young Indigenous girls feel included in netball.
"If we're getting more Indigenous girls in the sport, then more Indigenous girls should be able to be like, 'yeah, my cousin is playing over there, I'm going to feel confident to go out and try it myself'," she said.
"So I think having that little bit of inclusion in the community would make it easier for Indigenous girls to be able to get into sport in the first place and then be able to stick it out."
She said it would be beneficial for Indigenous girls to become involved in the sport.
"It's good for their health, it's good for their mental health, it's good for a whole lot of things," she said.
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Ms Morgan said she'd noticed kids, Aboriginal or not, spent a lot of time inside using technology, instead of playing sport outside.
"Whereas I've found that netball's always a good social outing, as well as for exercise," she said.
"So it's good for all aspects of everyone's health and especially in the Indigenous community that's something we could use a lot more of, especially with our younger generation.
"Our life expectancy is so much shorter, we're more susceptible to illnesses than anyone else.
"So if we can create a really good, healthy community for all our children growing up, I think that'd make a big difference in our life expectancies."
Ms Morgan said she thought netball programs targeting Indigenous players needed to happen more often.
"When it comes to netball, especially out in the leagues and then you look at Super Netball, there's not a whole lot of Indigenous players, if any sometimes," she said.
"It's a very addictive sport, but if you've never played it before it's very hard to be able to get into it.
"Whereas, doing this course, I'm hoping it might be able to give them the confidence to get out there and be like 'yeah, I want to play'."
Another netball session for Indigenous teen girls will be held on Wednesday.
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