Michelle Parsons honour for hard-working Narrikup centre court star Kristie Slater

Narrikup centre Kristie Slater has been recognised for her stellar season in the Albany Netball Association A1 competition, winning her first Michelle Parsons Memorial Award. After being runner-up to Lisa Amess in 2018, the hard-running centre court player enjoyed a superb regular season this year and polled 13 votes to win in a thrilling count on Saturday night. Slater, who joined Narrikup after previously playing A1 for Mt Barker club Bullets, was on five votes after four rounds but finished with a flurry to edge out Royals Saints’ Kathryn Jennings on 12. After a slow start to the season and struggling with injury at the back end, Slater said she didn’t give herself much of a chance of winning. “I was very surprised,” the 35-year-old said. “I felt I was my fittest this year and I played a good season but I had a couple of injuries at the end of games and didn’t play in the last game. “I wasn’t paying too much attention to my votes and at the end I was waiting for Kat to overtake me.” Slater spent time at the same club as Michelle Parsons, who the fairest and best A1 award is named in honour of. “Coming from Mt Barker and being a former club member with Michelle means a lot,” she said. “The award has become such a defender and shooters’ award and Kelly Judd won it as centre court a few years ago so it was nice to win one for centre court. “You work really hard throughout the season to feed the shooters and held the defence out so it’s nice to be rewarded.” Kangas’ Hannah Mackay was third with 11 votes and Molly Dickson from Grammar polled 10. Royals Saints’ Nardia Humphries, last year’s winner Darcy Kerr and Railways’ Hollee Siviour were next with nine votes and Royals Saints’ Imogen Sivwright and Railways’ Kiera Stephen were also on the final leaderboard with eight. Dickson won the Susan Howlett Award as the best 18-and-under player. Latrice Porter won the Dawn Ellis Umpiring Award.