The netball club was founded in 1980 by Heather Hewett and Angie Carthew, who were both 16, fresh from school and in their first job at Dowty's.  They worked in different departments and didn't know each other, but got chatting one day about the fact that they hadn't done any sport since leaving school and it turned out they both liked netball.  Asking around other departments to see if anyone else would be interested in starting a team, they were surprised to end up with about 15 - 20 people!

After originally marking a court out on the car park with chalk, Dowty realised that the girls were serious about this and they paid for a court to be painted and bought netball posts etc.  After many years in the local league, there became less and less Dowty employees in the club, so the name moved away from Dowty and the club have been sponsored by other local companies in recent years.

Sadly, Angie passed away in 2003 after a long battle with breast cancer.

In 2003, we changed our name to Churchdown Ladies in order to get sponsorship from differents sources during the season and because at the time our home ground was located in Churchdown.  However, at the beginning of the 2008/2009 season, we moved our home ground to Bentham but have retained the Churchdown Ladies name!

Netball is a fabulous sport, great exercise and being a team game, has a great social side to it!

Hev Hewett - Club Captain