Remembering Molly

• Published date: 05 November 2021

The outbreak of Covid-19 might have forced the cancellation of formal celebrations for Netball Horowhenua, such as a centennial ball that had been planned for this weekend, and high tea afternoon. But it hadn’t closed the gates to memory lane.

With many sports and organisations struggling for people to work voluntarily behind the scenes, what they would give for someone like Mrs Dorne, who lent her energies not just to netball, but a host of other pursuits.

In her youth Mrs Dorne was a Horowhenua senior representative player in netball, hockey, athletics, indoor basketball and softball, playing hockey and netball on alternate days until they were played on the same day, reluctantly giving up hockey.

Playing sport was a way to keep busy while husband Cliff served in World War II. They were married in 1940. He was abroad for the next four years.

A kidney illness that curtailed her playing career when she was in her prime saw her concentrate her energies on administration.

Looking back, you wonder how she found the time. She was made a life member of 16 organisations including the Tuis Netball Club, Athletics Manawatū-Whanganui, Levin Athletic Club, Levin Cycling Club, Ōhau Athletic Club and Levin Harrier Club.

Mrs Dorne was the first president of the Horowhenua Women’s Indoor Basketball Association and a founding member of the Horowhenua Netball Umpires Association.

She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1979-80 New Year Honours list for services to sport, and served her local community as a Justice of the Peace.

At one stage in the early 1970s, she was selector coach of both the Horowhenua A and B netball teams, as well coaching the Horowhenua College A and B teams, and the Tuis club team.

Mrs Dorne was a familiar figure at the Donnelly Park courts and netball pavilion from the late 1930s to the early 1990s, through boom times when as many as 800 players might enlist in a season.

She was a prolific writer of netball and regularly contributed articles to local newspapers of profiles and general news, and providing match results and draws, for more than 40 years.

That energy and unbiased articles kept netball at the forefront and the local association in the news and the sport in the public eye.

Mrs Dorne spent months compiling a handbook too, which coincided with the 75th jubilee of Netball Horowhenua in 1991, and which will always serve as a brilliant historical document for the future.

The association and the sport itself were...