Netball – U19 National Schools Tournament – County Rounds

Saturday saw us hosting the county rounds of the National Netball Schools Competition – U14, U16 and U19. It was going to be a full-on day for the U19’s, as our tournament was a round robin, so we played everyone in the age group, which meant 10 matches in total. Helping out with the U19 team was Romey K and Aimee N (y11) and Liv M (y10). So, for a team that hadn’t practiced much together, we had some really good matches and even the harder teams, we often managed to get half their score. Bhasvic, Hurst and Brighton College had very strong teams and we struggled against them but our best matches, the ones we won, were against Eastbourne, Bede’s and Mayfield. Lancing were our first match and we narrowly missed out on the win, losing to them 6-5. If we had played them later on, we would have beaten them for sure. We lost but got half scores or more against the remaining schools: Collyers, Ardingly and Seaford. The standard of netball from all the schools was amazing, and the second half of the day saw us go from strength to strength, and we felt really positive by the end of it.

Coaches’ player of the tournament: Clara (GD) – for working so well with Solari in the D, making lots of turnovers and forcing the attackers to pass the ball around the D, not allowing an easy pass in.

Individual Highlights

GK/GD – Solari – always so good at timing tips/flying interceptions, super light on her feet so tracking her shooter well and slowing down balls into the shooters

WD – Zara – lovely drives through the mid-court, into the space and getting free from her defender, to offer that mid-court pass that we were often missing

WD – Romey – staying tight to her WA, who was often super quick and forcing her wide and away from the D, great 2nd stage defence aswell to pressure the pass

C – Izzy – lovely drives through the court and into space, often playing against the best player on the team, also did some lovely feeds in to the shooters

C – Aimee – normally plays GD, but can clearly play any position well, read the game so well, making sure she didn’t drive into other players space and was always there just when you needed her, did incredible feeds into the shooters

WA – Liv – playing girls 4 years older than her but didn’t let it faze her. Worked well with Saffron, trying not to get in each others space and again doing some great feeds into the shooters

GA – Saffron – working well with Alice, not getting in her space and being confident to give the overheads, got lots of rebounds too against tall defenders, shooting accuracy was excellent

GS - Alice – holding her space in the D and allowing herself room behind her for the lovely overhead ball, shooting accuracy was also excellent