The Orange Netball Association has cancelled a state-wide representative netball tournament scheduled to be held at the PCYC on Saturday.
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The ONA made the call on its Facebook page on Wednesday morning, citing "risks associated with COVID-19" for cancelling the Orange Represntative Netball Carnival.
Carnival convenor Erin Campbell said the ONA had weighed up "what was best for the community" in deciding to cancel the event.
Twenty-seven teams from across the state - from under 11s to under 17s - had registered to play but roughly a dozen had pulled out in recent weeks.
"We didn't get as many teams from Sydney nominating [as we normally do] as I think the associations there have tried to clamp down on that a bit more, but we thought having people coming into our community from anywhere else was just a bit too much of a risk," Mrs Campbell said.
"We've been watching the [coronavirus] situation really, really closely but it just hasn't got any better."
Coronavirus guidelines put in place by Netball NSW also made convening the tournament difficult, as would rain and cold weather predicted for Saturday.
"We'd have had to have half the teams inside and half the teams outside and not allow any cross-over," she said.
"With some wilder weather predicted for the weekend we couldn't leave half the parents and children outside with nowhere to hide."
Mrs Campbell said the ONA "hasn't taken the decision lightly" to cancel knowing how little representative sport is on the table for children in 2020, but the decision was made "for the best" of the Orange community.
"We just don't know if someone visiting Orange has it ... we've all got elderly family members or know people at-risk," she said.
"We didn't want to be known as the COVID carnival."
Mrs Campbell said the ONA might consider trying to run the tournament later in the year if case numbers across the state went down, but "at this stage" is turning its focus to 2021.