THERE are few people in the Netball Super League quite like Severn Stars’ player-coach Jo Trip.

Not only is she a one-of-a-kind defender from the other side of the world, but she is one of only two playing coaches in the league, with playing coaches themselves a rare site in modern elite sport.

Although when she signed on as Stars coach ahead of the 2023 season, being a playing coach was not something she initially wanted to do.

“I said I would prefer not to, and I would prefer to coach because I know that is my future,” Trip explained. “But also, we need to be smart. We have a budget, I need to get certain players within that budget. If there is someone that I think will fit in the team, I would have taken them.

“I was looking at Commonwealth Games and all the top Jamaican defenders are all in Australia, so you go down the list of countries, and then South Africa and then you have got Shadine (Van der Merwe) and the girls that already were signed in teams over here.”

“So, by that time for me it was very much ‘okay, I think I can give to this team more than bringing in another import could’, and that decision was made. I was the tenth player signing, after I had signed most of the squad. I had signed three of my defenders and thought ‘yep, I want to be working with them this season’.

“I knew it would be a hard gig, but I have felt that I am thriving on court and off court, so it’s something I’m really pleased I chose to do.”

Trip certainly has a lot to think about on game days, but puts strategies in place to ensure she can take care of all her responsibilities to a high standard.

 “Thank goodness for preseason as it gave me time to practice,” she said.

“We would go into the changing room, and I was (thinking) ‘you’re the coach, you’re the coach, you’re the coach’… then I was like ‘you’re a player, right, get changed, get all your playing stuff ready, get really sorted and then it was back to ‘right, you’re a coach’.

“I was making mental notes on changing those hats which really helped me. I would shift from coach mode to playing mode. When we walked out, I was in player mode, letting the captains lead the warmup and prep us. I did really try to step back.”

“At quarter breaks and half time breaks I was in coach mode again visualising changing those hats. Sometimes I do have to ask for space to get things done. Especially when you get more coverage, there is a lot more pull and more interviews coming through.

“Sometimes after a game is the hardest because I want to be with the team and speak to individuals post-match but get pulled in so many different directions. It is tough, but I would not change it. I feel like I have a system now.”

After a long playing career that stretched halfway around the world, 2023 is Trip’s first year in the head coach role.

Beginning in her native New Zealand. Her career then took her to England and to several clubs in the Super League.

After starting her journey in the New Zealand pathway system and having an extraordinarily successful school netball career, Trip earned her first elite level contract with the Tactix in what the joint ANZ Championship was, between Australis and New Zealand.

She spent four years there before venturing off to the Magic for two years, before heading over to England when she was 25 for a different experience.

Her move to England came about because of several factors.

“I had friends come over to the Super League, but they didn’t love it or do so well to be honest, but it did intrigue me,” she said.

“They play a unique style and at the time there were eight teams just in the England League. I just wanted to travel and when you come over on the New Zealand dollar your money halves, so I thought I will make some money in Britain and then I will travel Europe, which is exactly what I did.”

“I travelled for four months solo through Europe. I had some honest conversations with Karen Atkinson my Loughborough Lightning Head Coach, and she made a lot of changes in the offseason, so I decided to go back to Loughborough again.

“We won 17 out of 18 games that season and made finals, so it was quite a turnaround in a short amount of time, but what I really liked about the league over here is just the difference in players.”

“In New Zealand it is small, you play the same people from a noticeably early age, so the same people that I was playing when I was 13/14 through age group rep teams, I was still playing at 24/25 and it was all a bit same-same.

“You do only play that one kind of style in New Zealand, the off-body style. At that time Australia were playing very man-on, England is very man-on as well. I wanted to improve my game and add new tools and understand the game in diverse ways.”

Trip then retired for a year before coming back into the league and into the situation she is in now. Mental exhaustion played a part in her choice to retire, but a niggling love for high performance meant she could not stay away.

“I retired more for the mental aspect of it,” she said.

“The Covid year was not great for me, I have been quite honest with that. I really struggled within that year, the environment and I guess just where I was personally. I fell out of love with the sport, so I stepped away from it. If you do not love it you cannot continue to do it, it is better to step away.

“And then I missed it. I knew I would, but what I missed was the high-performance aspect. I contacted Vic Burgess at Loughborough Lightning who bought me in as a technical defensive coach and the performance environment Loughborough uphold, drew me right back in.

“That is what I was about, that is what I loved, and that is what I had been missing for a while I think. For me it was very much about loving high performance, the test the girls were putting themselves under, the physicality, everything I saw back in that environment I craved. Then the opportunity came at Severn Stars, and I decided to jump headfirst into my first coaching role and tie up my laces again.”

After initially being encouraged to try for the Wasps job, Trip was not ready to take on a senior coaching job yet.

The Stars job came up a few months later and the fact they had been bottom of the table meant that Trip did not feel the pressure coming in that she might have felt at a better performing club.

After being constricted with a limit on job options while in the UK, Trip naturally fell into coaching as a viable career path.

“Your hands are tied when you come over here as a sports athlete, which I continue to push against. When you are over here on a sports visa you can only do something related to your sport, so if you do a part-time job it has to be in your sport, which is all consuming, I disagree with it totally.”

“At about 18 years old I began coaching in New Zealand, I was coaching loads here because that is the only other thing I could do. So, I have felt like I have always coached. I have also been a big voice and a leader down the defence end for quite some years now, so I think it has been quite a natural shift for me into the more elite level of coaching.”

With at least one more year left at Severn Stars to work her magic, let us see how much further those coaching skills can take this Kiwi and her Stars.