Net result for sporting pioneer Mary, 90

A team of pioneers started a small sporting revolution, setting the game free from the school and youth club environment and opening up opportunities to a whole new constituency of post-school age women, women in the workplace, women with families, and so on.

One of those who broke the chains was Mrs Mary Kilby, of Shrewsbury, who celebrated her 90th birthday in February.

A sense of what was expected of women in her young days can be gained from the fact that when she, the 18-year-old Miss Mary Reeves, married Len Kilby, she was required to give up her job on the switchboard at Shrewsbury telephone exchange, as married women were not allowed to work there.

Now her son Dave, of Bicton, is compiling a little booklet which tells the story of the development of Shropshire netball from the 1940s to the present day, and the part of his mother and other key players.

Her childhood was at a terraced house in St Michael's Terrace, near to St Michael's Church. While the house is long gone, the long wall remains that was between her home and the church and against which she spent hours throwing and catching a ball.

At the age of 12 there was drama when, as she walked to girl guides, a German bomber flew over. She saw the grinning pilot and moments later came a loud explosion as a bomb blew up the back end of a stationary freight train at Crewe Bank. A large part of the train crashed through the roof of her home, and the family had to move out for six months.

Her netball awakening came when she went to the new Priory Girls' School in Longden Road in 1939.

"The story goes that because in the war years the new playing fields were being brought into agricultural use, they played netball on the concrete playground," said Dave.

"That's an important reason why netball became more popular than hockey or lacrosse - because of the war they couldn't get on the grass."

She played at centre in the school team, and when she left she joined the YWCA youth club in the town and carried on playing, with various youth clubs in the area playing netball.

"You have to remember this was a time when women were not quite as free with their leisure time and possibly a little more tied to the home than now, bringing up children and so on. That freedom of being able to go out and play women's team sports was relatively unusual."

A local PE adviser, a Miss Jarvis, had developed netball in the schools, so it became very popular, resulting in many school leavers looking for opportunities to continue to play the game they loved.

Dave says she and a colleague, a Miss Patrick, galvanised women PE teachers and local youth club leaders to organise competitive netball beyond the school gate.

Mary, by now working in the wages department at Hall Engineering at Harlescott, formed a team, and came to be one of the driving forces behind promoting the local netball movement.

With support from Miss Jarvis, Mary started the first post-war senior netball league in Shrewsbury.

"Mum crossed the boundary between youth netball and taking netball into the workplace," says Dave.

"It was Shrewsbury indoor netball league, founded in 1952. They played at the swimming baths in Shrewsbury. They would board over the pool during the winter for maintenance, and you had the floor for an indoor netball court."

Mary started her own team to play in the newly-formed league - the "All Blues," which soon started to dominate and took the first ever league title.

Among other teams in the league were Holy Trinity, Meole, Abbey Wanderers, Shrewsbury Wanderers, Young Farmers, and the Girls Friendly Society.

The league is still going strong today, although Mary is not involved these days, having stepped down from her role chairing the league in 2003.

"She remains interested, but she isn't very keen on the uniforms these days. In her days they used to have a little T shirt and skirt. I think they wear this lycra stuff now which is a bit more trendy and fashionable."

Her involvement over the years has been all-embracing, including coaching and umpiring, and during 23 years teaching at Holy Cross Primary School in Shrewsbury she ran after-school netball clubs and started an annual primary schools netball tournament.

"When I meet people in the street they will say 'How's your mum? She taught me netball.' They don't say she taught me English or maths or anything else - they say she taught me netball, and that's what she is remembered for by primary school children."

Dave's book is called Mighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow, a saying of his mother's.

"I like social history and my own background is sport science, the study and understanding of the impact sport has on people.

"Mum's story does paint a very strong picture of how that has come about. It also helps us learn where we may be going wrong or right in the future in how we develop things.

"Mum had a lot of freedom of time as a child. She became her own person through sport. It made her make decisions, gave strength of character, and so on."

Those sporting genes run strongly in the family, with Dave's sister Karen Teece being a leading light in the county netball scene as a player and a coach, with Mary's granddaughters and great-granddaughter carrying on the tradition across four generations.

And late husband Len was manager of Oswestry Town FC and Welshpool FC, and for a time was Shropshire's number one tennis player who got within a point of qualifying for Wimbledon.

Dave had an incomplete version of his booklet ready for his mum's 90th birthday on February 29, and is now putting the final touches to it.

He expects to print about 100 copies for the benefit of those interested in the development of netball in Shropshire, and is also bringing it to the attention of England Netball, as the All England Netball Association is now called, with what Mary and others did being part of the history of the sport.

"We are proud of her as a family for the contribution she made."