Sunshine Coast Thunder Ruby Coach for the 2023 Queensland Ruby Series is Lyn Pugh. A local Sunshine Coast Coach who fully understands the importance of local netball pathways and developing talent in our own backyard.

Like most netball coaches, Lyn herself also played as a youngster, starting with Cannon Hill Stars at Metropolitan Districts in Brisbane and making her first Queensland team at the age of 14 (Under 16’s back then), going on to play Queensland under 19s, under 21s and Open. As an adult, Lyn took an interest in the indoor netball arena, where of course being the over-achiever she is, represented both Queensland and Australia!

Lyn’s introduction to coaching netball is both typical, in that she became involved through being drafted to coach her own young daughters. Though not so typical in that it was in the environment of Singapore, where she and her family lived for 5 years. On her return to Australia and the Sunshine Coast she continued her coaching at the Mountain Creek Netball Club and has not looked back since.

Putting in a lot of hard work behind the scenes, Lyn is staunch in her belief in the potential of the young local girls she has coached over the years. Having coached at the likes of St Andrews Anglican College and Head Coach Co-ordinator of Netball at Sunshine Coast Grammar plus local Association representative teams and as she says:

“I have a real passion for the girls having a pathway here on the coast.”

A lifelong learner, Lyn is a big believer in upskilling and learning from every opportunity she is presented with from the various levels of Queensland Netball Coaching accreditation available to never missing the chance to learn from the experiences of fellow coaches such as Liz White and Noeline Taurua – just to name a few – and is not adverse to the odd Ken Warren book to learn better communication techniques.

As Lyn says: “There’s still a lot to learn. You always learn. It’d be pretty boring if you weren’t always learning.”  

When asked what Lyn finds most fulfilling about coaching, she thoughtfully considers with: “If you’ve given someone any type of direction and they’ve taken it on board and it’s been successful for them, it’s really rewarding. And they’ve realised it was successful too.” Success in Lyn’s mind can be summed up as she laughingly describes one U16’s players response when a play came off brilliantly:

“Lyn! Lyn?, did you see that?”

Lyn Pugh is a coach who believes building relationships with the players is integral for success. Working in a high performance pathway like Sunshine Coast Thunder is an experience Lyn appreciates and she hopes that support will result in the Ruby players gelling nicely into a ‘team’:

“Bringing them together, that’s, that’s going to be the main thing and feeling supported by everyone and if we can be relentless in our attack structures and our defence structures and be consistent and be resilient and not drop our heads, if we can just plug away at that and reach top four, I’d be really happy.”

What you may not know about Lyn Pugh 

• Pugh is pronounced “Pew, like Hugh but with a P.”
• After overcoming a serious health scare in recent years, Lyn has become a hardcore walker, so hardcore in fact she will be participating in the 35km ‘Bloody Long Walk’ in 2023.
• When not training to walk from Mount Coolum to Mooloolaba Beach, Lyn can be found holidaying on a beach, either locally or overseas. Her aim is to combine both so-called ‘leisure’ activities by doing the Bay of Fires walk down in Tasmania in future.

Sunshine Coast Thunder is so fortunate to have the lovely Simone Nalatu as Head Coach of the HART Queensland Sapphire Series team. The former Queensland Firebird and Fijian Pearl International has a wealth of coaching experience, with a particular aptitude for developing emerging talent.

From playing with the Pine Rivers Association during her junior playing days (which used to be a part of the Sunshine Coast) to finishing her domestic career with SunCoast Lynx. It was at SunCoast Lynx that Simone played under Jenny Brazel who is the current Assistant Coast of the Suncorp Super Netball team, the Sunshine Coast Lightning whom she has had a long-term association with to this day.

Like many elite netballers, Simone’s coaching career had very humble beginnings. Playing for the Firebirds and being called on to coach her niece’s team, “the mighty Sandgate Hawks”, who coincidentally many years later her daughter has just started playing with for the first time this year.

Over the years since retirement, Simone has epitomised Queensland netball pathways, starting from Assistant and Head coaching roles with SunCoast Lynx, to the last 7 years of Under Age Queensland teams. The last 5 years Simone has continued her illustrious post-retirement career as the head  coach of the Under 19’s Queensland team and the two years prior of under 17’s.

Simone has an unrivalled  passion for player development. When asked what her proudest moment coaching is, there is no one win or particularly successful team she recalled, instead rattling off a list of young talent who are either just now starting to make their mark on the netball scene, or knocking on the door of the Suncorp Super Netball elite competition.

“Macy Gardner, Mia Stower, Ash Irvine, Charlie Bell, who else is there? Roo, Reilley Batcheldor, like all of those… your Ava’s [Ava Black] and your Lisa MiMi’s and all those girls, they’ve come through the pathway as well.” Simone supplied as her proudest moment, coaching these young players, “even watching Steph [Stephanie Wood] and Shez [Laura Scherian] and Cara [Koenan], you know, they were there when I was assistant to Jenno [Jenny Brazel] at under 21s or even when they were at Lynx. They weren’t SSN or ANZ, so all those girls who have come through.”

Speaking proudly and humbly of her role in their – and many other talented young netballers – development to varying degrees, Simone’s passion for developing netballers to their potential shines through when asked why she loves coaching, it is not just about winning but encouraging and developing humans:

“They’ve given it their best shot. Yeah, they’re playing to their potential and they’re enjoying it, they’re great you know, humans, that kind of stuff. That’s what I love about it, not like the wins and that, yes, absolutely, you play to win, but that’s not necessarily why I do it.”

As a mother of two young primary school aged children, coach of the Queensland U19’s, Sunshine Coast Thunder Head Coach and working in the Health & Wellbeing sector with some of the more remote Queensland communities you could call Simone a very busy woman and you would be right.

She credits her husband with being wonderfully supportive enabling her to advance her coaching career from those early days, swapping their newborn at Caboolture after work so she could coach, and even to her more elite coaching career now.

“Balance” is an important word for Simone, something she has learned from her own playing career and raising a family while working her way through the coaching ranks. When asked about she thinks the most important lesson the girls she has coached have taken away from her coaching, she responds with:

“I hopefully instil confidence in them, so I think they know that I can see their potential. I think I do bring that kind of high expectations, standard organisation both on the court and off the court, because I know the importance of that from both when I was playing, when I was working. So that balance, you need to do both. They’re all at that age now where they’re having to make those decisions.”

With a number of players on representative duties, it has been a challenging pre-season training-wise for a season that starts 22 April 2023, though Simone has high expectations because “we have been close” in the past.

“We want to be better than we were last year.  We won’t settle for anything less than being in the top four and we want to be in the Grand Final. I think we’ve got a very similar team, so I think we will.”

Simone Nalatu has big plans for Sunshine Coast Thunder and we are lucky she has chosen to continue her coaching career in our backyard.

What you may not know about Simone:  

• Nalatu is pronounced “No-Lar-tu”
• Sim played all three mid-court positions during her career
• She played for Fiji at two World Cup and represented Queensland in Shot put at Adelaide Nationals when she was 12 (which was her first trip away on a plane and alone).