The Minister for Youth and Sports, Laisenia Tuitubou, aims to find out today the reason behind the resignation of Fijian Pearls coach Kate Carpenter.

Netball Fiji released a statement last Saturday confirming they received Carpenter’s resignation last week citing personal reasons.  Carpenter left for New Zealand on Christmas Day.

“I will definitely get to the bottom of this as to why she resigned,” Tuitubou said.

“I will talk with Fijian National Sports Commission chairman Peter Mazey about this.

“The Government is funding overseas coaches to train and develop our teams to another level.

“When we bring in overseas coaches, we should have an understudy so that when they leave, we’ve someone to take their place and carry on from where they left off.

“What has happened with Kate (Carpenter) is indeed a loss to Netball Fiji because aside from coaching the national team, she helped develop netball from the grassroots and setting up programmes as well. “But as always, when one door closes another one opens and a new coach needs to be identified.”

While Carpenter’s reason for her resignation was personal, Tuitubou assumes that her contract was coming to an end.

“I assume that, and hopefully I’m right, that her contract was coming to an end. And with any coaching position, coaches must reapply if they want to continue their term,” he said.

“Kate would have to reapply but I will need to talk to Mazey about all this and see what really happened.”

Carpenter joined Fiji Netball in September, 2014 to a hectic Fiji Pearls programme. This included the Super League programme where she identified talents for the national squad and preparing the national team for its international assignments in the historic Oceania Test Series that involved the New Zealand Silver Ferns.

Carpenter was also involved in training tours to play the ANZ franchise teams in Waikato and Melbourne, the Pacific Games in Papua New Guinea and the Netball World Cup in Sydney where  Fiji finished 9th.

Edited by Osea Bola

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