U13 ISA netball national finals – 3rd in the plate

By Mrs Rebecca Stewart, PE Teacher.

he U13 Netball team travelled to Warwick on Friday 21st March to play in the ISA National Finals, having qualified as the winners of the East region back in January.
The team got off to a flying start with a strong win against Stover 11 – 0.
Our second game was not so easy, playing against Alderley Edge who also qualified in first place in their area tournament. The girls had to rethink their positioning, mark tighter and fight for every ball. Despite losing the game, we took an important one point for getting 50% of their score.
Game 3 – Farnborough Hill started strong, capitalising on every opportunity, taking them into the second half 3 – 1 up. We had to dig deep, stick to our game plan and pull one goal back at a time, despite Farnborough Hill having a huge height advantage. We drove forward, reoffered and took time to only put the shots up that delivered results. We were very happy to take a 5 – 5 draw and three more points.

Our next two games were against Lewes Old Grammer and St Mary’s. We worked hard as a defensive unit against some tall attack and the centre court converted turnover balls into goals by our shooters. Winning 5 – 2 and 10 – 3.

The last game in our group was against Tettelham College, with the score at 2 – 1 at half time, the girls gave everything for the last six minutes, pulling away an impressive score line of 9 – 1.
This put us in 2nd place after the morning round and into the Plate competition for the afternoon, where we met New Hall in the semi finals. They were a strong team with slick passing and accurate shooting by half time the score was 4 – 1. The girls worked hard in defence but unfortunately we lost 6 – 2.

Our final game was for 3rd/4th play off and was ironically against RHS, having travelled 150 miles to play a school a stones throw away! With a nearly 6 ft tall shooter we knew our defense would have to work extremely hard to stop the high balls in. We battled hard against a physical team but were two goals down at half time.
We had six minutes to change our fate, every single player brought their ‘A’ game and managed to pull a nail biting draw 8 – 8 sending us into two minutes of extra time each way. With both teams having multiple opportunities, the nerves where starting to show both on and off the court! The shooters gallantly putting up high pressure shots and the defence making it incredibly difficult for RHS to score.

With score now at 10 – 10 we went to Golden Goal. With our circle defence denying them a goal, the team carefully carried the ball down the court to our attacking third and with one very risky big ball in, the shooters held their own and took the goal. We all jumped for joy and were thrilled to take the win to become 3rd place in the Plate and 7th out of 28 schools overall.
Congratulations to Amelia, Annabel, Cora, Evelyn, Isha, Isla A-H, Isla B, Isla M, and Lara.