With the national championships still the best part of two weeks away, preparations for the tournament in Dunedin are still on the back-burner.
New Zealand Netball staff are focused on the international series. The Silver Ferns beat the Australian Diamonds 55-51 in game one of the Constellation Cup in Invercargill on Sunday. Game two is in Auckland tomorrow night.
Once that match is out of the way, they will turn their full attention to the nationals.
But in the meantime the job of securing all the volunteers has fallen to Netball South development officer Brooke Morshuis.
It takes a small army of volunteers to help ensure the event runs smoothly.
''We've got lots of local volunteers on board,'' Morshuis said.
''Our volunteers have come from a wide variety of places within the zone. We've got ball girl positions and we've got girls coming from Balclutha just to be ball girls. It is fantastic.''
Morshuis has enlisted the help of 21 volunteers - not including all the ball girls - for a variety of roles from changing room co-ordinator to team liaison and all ''the little jobs that need doing throughout the week''.
Initially, Invercargill was set to host the championships but the event was shifted to Dunedin because of delays in the rebuild of Stadium Southland. Dunedin last hosted the event in 2005.
The format has changed from previous seasons, with the two divisions scrapped in favour of two pools of six teams. The teams will play five round-robin games and the top two placed teams from each pool will qualify for the semifinals.
Otago is in pool A with Christchurch, Wellington, North Harbour, Counties Manukau and Otago B.
Otago finished a disappointing fifth in 2005, but this time around Otago will be defending its title and has a strong team featuring two players - defender Storm Purvis and shooter Te Paea Selby-Rickit - from the New Zealand under-21 side which won the world youth championships in Glasgow just over two weeks ago.
Fringe Silver Fern Shannon Francois will captain the side, which includes talented midcourter Gina Crampton and plenty of options on attack, where Olivia Bates and Kate Shearer are likely to jostle for a starting spot in the shooting circle alongside Selby-Rickit.
Defensively, Otago will miss the experience of Demelza McCloud, who has moved home to Australia, and Zoe Walker, who has transferred to Canterbury.
