Hectic Hockey Week

Captain of Hockey - Bridie M’s weekly report gave a fantastic round-up of a busy week for the U13 girls.

There is quite a lot to go through with hockey.  I’m going to start briefly by mentioning Set Hockey as I forgot my match report last week.  I don’t need to go into detail but it is worth saying that I thought that great hockey was played on the day by everyone – whatever their Set.  I don’t know what it is about set matches but for some reason, we all get a bit stronger, passionate and have a bit more fire in our bellies when we are fighting for our Sets.  Special mentions go to all the Year 5’s for tackling the bigger girls and to Amelia for being in goal for the White’s and facing some pretty hard balls.

Blue Set, you were brilliant and worked really well as a team.  You didn’t concede a single goal so wherever you are – well done to AURORA, ESME, EMILY R, PIPPA, GRACE, ISSIE G and not forgetting GABRIELLA, who scored not one but two goals for the team on the day.  Great play girls.

Moving on to our trip to Essex on Tuesday, this was the East Region tournament which we qualified to attend in the County Championship by being Runners Up.

We knew it was going to be a really tough challenge as the other schools attending were big schools with some heavyweight players.  We played 6 mini matches throughout the day.  Some matches were really tough and others we were more equally matched.  Ava certainly had a lot of practice in goal!

My own personal highlight of the day was taking my first ever penalty flick and I’m sure the other girls will all have taken away something positive from the experience.  We didn’t win anything but hopefully we left having improved our hockey.  Well played everyone and thank you Mr G and Miss Wood for taking us there for the two days.

Finally, yesterday we played Glebe at home.  We were lucky enough to have Mr Bateman umpiring from Oakham School, who is their Director of Hockey, but he brought some terrible weather with him.  So dripping wet and freezing cold, we took on a team we are usually strong against but they surprised us.  They had some big girls and they put us under pressure from the outset.  It was one of those days where we had so many opportunities to score but none of them converted.  Our first and only goal came before half time.  A’ishah joined us for a few minutes play and we went in to the break knowing we had to hold onto the lead.

The second half was equally tense, again with lots of opportunities to score that didn’t quite make it and I think we were all relieved when the final whistle blew, the match was ours and everyone could get dried off and back into the warm.

Tomorrow is our match against Witham, which will be incredibly tough.  We all need to go into it knowing we need to play our absolute best.  Maybe we should call it a ‘Set Match’.

Good luck everyone and to everyone else playing tomorrow.