'Coming along nicely': Netballer finding feet at Hampden league level again

The decorated netballer joined Warrnambool in the off-season from Warrnambool and District league club Merrivale to test herself at the higher level.

At the season's halfway mark, she has become an important contributor for the fifth-placed Blues and is loving her new home at Reid Oval.

"It's been great, can't fault it at all, we've been welcomed in really well," she told The Standard.

"Us as a family have fitted in really well, the kids are loving it, everybody loves the kids. We've got so much support and help which is great, we're loving it."

Peake won six HFNL open premierships at Koroit between 2010-2018 before leading Merrivale to a WDFNL A-grade flag in 2019 as playing-coach.

The star midcourter missed the majority of the 2021-22 seasons with back-to-back pregnancies but returned to the court in 2023, featuring in a grand final for the Tigers.

She has been named in the Blues' best players three times from nine games this season and is happy with her progress.

"(I'm) slowly getting there, I feel each week I'm getting a little bit better at things," she said.

"First few games were a bit rusty. I didn't put too much pressure on myself knowing last year when I came back after the kids, I think by round three I was ready to quit because I was like 'I'm not up to this, I'm no good'.

"Carts (Merrivale coach Elisha Sobey) was really good, she's like 'no, trust me, give it time you'll find your feet'. Obviously by the end I did and thought I was ready to give the Hampden league a crack so I anticipated that it would be similar this year.

"I've definitely still got a lot to improve on personally but coming along nicely."

Peake said the Blues, under new coach Kate Lindsey, enjoyed playing alongside each other and looked forward to training and games every week.

She is happy with where the team sits, just four points behind second-placed Cobden with nine rounds remaining.

"We sort of didn't put any pressure on ourselves for this year," she said.

"We're a very new group with a new coach who's come in and put in place new and different structures. It was always going to take us time to adjust to that and I think in the last couple of weeks we're really starting to feel ourselves coming together as a team and our structures coming into play.

"So that's promising but we're really happy with the position we're in and hopefully, this next half, we can knock off some of the teams that we were beaten by early or get a little bit closer."

Warrnambool hosts reigning premier South Warrnambool in a super Saturday on June 15 on what was supposed to be a competition-wide bye. The standalone fixture at Reid Oval has been brought forward from round 14.