THOUSANDS of school children will descend on Glasgow to watch the world's best netball players compete.

More than 5000 pupils have tickets for the World Youth Netball Championships 2013 which kicks off with the opening ceremony at the Emirates Arena, tonight.

The top 20 teams in the world will be in Glasgow, and organisers are hoping they will inspire the young audience to take up the sport.

To celebrate the event, four primary seven pupils from Alexandra Parade Primary School met with members of the Australian team who are defending the World Youth Champion title they won in 2009.

Australia captain Maddy Proud and vice captain Kate Shimmin shot some goals with the youngsters, who will be attending the 10 day competition.

Ahead of the championships, Netball Scotland and the WYNC Netball Development Group launched a national school engagement programme to encourage primary and secondary schools to get involved with the sport.

A total of 352 new primary and secondary schools across the country have signed up to be affiliated to Netball Scotland in the last 18 months, taking the number from 179 to more than 500.

In Australia, netball is the biggest participation team sport for women and attracts sell out crowds of more than 10,000 to major matches.

Maddy, 19, from Adelaide, said: "All those basic passing and catching skills, if you can develop those from a young age it is a lot easier to carry on later in life so that is definitely the place to start - start from the bottom and then get to the top."

Nikki Galbraith from Alexandra Parade Primary School said she was looking forward to watching the games.

The 10-year-old from Carntyne said: "I like seeing them play because it looks fun. When you watch them they are going fast and really concentrating."

Gillian Stewart, membership and competition manager for Netball Scotland, said: "Netball Scotland's goal for the next 10 or 15 years is to have netball as the number one sport for women and girls in Scotland, we also want to raise the profile to make sure that not only are we giving young girls the opportunity to play but we are giving opportunities for coaches to develop, umpires to develop and volunteers."

Tickets for the 2013 WYNC start at £3 for children and £6 for adults.

For more information visit www.world youthnetball.com or phone 0141 353 8000.

matty.sutton@ eveningtimes.co.uk