Bowls, golf, jet boating and quad biking have all been given a whirl as they band together for the opening few weeks of their preseason.
The Steel headed to Te Anau for a three-day camp recently, and in between training and getting out in the community, they completed team-building activities, including laying bark chips at local golf courses and an Amazing Race-style challenge running through Dock Bay.
Steel coach Wendy Frew said it had been a "really valuable" start to their preseason, setting out their values and gelling together.
"We’ve got lots of new faces, lots of new management, so it was really cool to get together and get away from just the comfort of our home," Frew said.
Many new players were from outside the region and had settled in well.
"They really seem to be embracing the Invercargill-Southland culture.
"It’s a really cool time for the girls. They’ve already noticed how welcoming people are, which is pretty special."
The foot is on the throttle for the Steel across the next eight weeks of preseason.
They head to Ōtaki for the annual preseason tournament in April and have other warm-up games in Christchurch and against local men’s teams.
Preseason games are more vital than ever after the introduction of four new rules for the ANZ Premiership season: the two-point shot, a coaches’ box, time-outs and live umpire audio.
The two-point shot, which is in action for the final five minutes of each quarter, has been the most talked about — Australia’s domestic league introduced it a couple of years ago and England has followed this year — and Frew felt it was an exciting initiative.
"I think it’s a timely change for the game.
"Yeah, we love the traditional game, but this is just going to add a whole new element to the game itself.
"I think the fans will love it, the wee kids will love it. I think there’ll be good hype around it."
It could alter the way teams approach the final minutes of each quarter, especially if they were playing catch-up, and Frew said it would be no different for the Steel.
"It’s going to really be a big element of how teams look at the two-point shot, how you can defend it, and how you can attack it and do what works best for us as a team.
"To be honest, going to Ōtaki and Christchurch is going to be so good to actually play the game at that intensity and just see what other teams are doing.
"For us, we’ll certainly have structures in place and it’ll be very dependent on the score, who’s on the court and how things are going."
Coaches can also deliver messages to their players from a coaches’ box, directly in front of the team bench, throughout the game.
But Frew highlighted the time-outs — each team is allocated one per half — as a bigger coup than some might have thought.
When Frew played for the Sting and Steel from 2002 to 2018, time-outs were not around and they relied on their leaders to make decisions at crucial times.
"But I think now you have the time-out, it’s a great chance for us coaches to coach more and just be able to put more of our flavour into the quarters.
"During the game, in the heat of the moment, when sometimes as a player on the court they’re not potentially seeing little details that we’ll be seeing on the sideline."
The Steel start their season against the Mainland Tactix in Christchurch on May 11.
