Slam dunk wins for Kearsney

Basketball

KEARSNEY travelled to the Midlands for the second consecutive week, this time to play St Charles in what is always a tough fixture.

This year, both teams were evenly matched and it came down to which team was hungrier for the win as the schools play a similar kind of basketball with high-impact players and transition-style offence.

St Charles came out firing in the first quarter and took an early lead. Kearsney needed to play catch up and soon settled down, found their rhythm and erased a nine-point deficit to lead by three at the end of the first quarter (13-10).

Kearsney continued with this trend and were in the lead 26 – 19 at halftime.

In the third quarter, Kearsney did not allow St Charles space to breathe on offence. But they rushed their offence, turning over the ball frequently and this allowed St Charles to stay within striking distance. The quarter ended with Kearsney up 39 – 30.

The visitors committed a number of silly fouls and St Charles continued shooting free throws. The hosts made a final push in the fourth quarter and saw them outscore their opponents 15 – 10, but it was not enough to erase the nine-point lead. Kearsney held their nerve in the final two minutes to win an epic, high-intensity game that had the crowd riveted.

Kearsney’s 1st team beat St Charles’ 1st team 49 – 45.

ALSO READ: Kearsney swings victoriously into summer sports

Cricket

A young Kearsney side, sporting three Grade 10s and only two matrics, took on the number one KZN side at St Charles in overcast conditions on Saturday.

Things didn’t go to plan for Kearsney as they lost the toss and were put in to bat in favourable bowling conditions, against a white-hot fielding and bowling side. To their credit, the Kearsney batsmen offered stoic defence and were not intimidated by the excellent bowling and tight fielding.

They cleared a reasonable total of 171/9 in the allotted 45 overs. Dylan Hulett (38), Louis Nel (35) and Cade Carmichael (34) were the main contributors with the bat.

It has always going to be 30 runs short and so it proved. St Charles got the runs with 44 balls to spare and five wickets in hand. Kearsney may have thought they were in the game with St Charles at 90 for 5, but their experience and depth in batting got them over the line fairly comfortably.

It was a great learning curve for hosts’ young side and bodes well as they head into the Michaelmas Festival.

1st XI Kearsney 171/9 (Hulett 38, Carmichael 34)

1st XI St Charles 172/5

Kearsney lost by 5 wickets

ALSO READ: Epic clash ends in draw

Old Cricks cricket match

Kearsney 1st XI beat an Old Boys team by six wickets in the College’s annual Old Cricks match on Friday. The Old Boys team included several star cricketers, including former Proteas and Dolphins player, Andrew Hudson (1982) and his son, Graham (2016).

Provincial selections

Ethan Mills will captain the U19 boys KZN touch rugby team for the Inter-Provincial Touch Rugby Tournament in Cape Town this weekend.

Massimo Fierro and Connor De Bruyn have been selected for the Sharks High Schools’ U17 7s rugby team which will represent KZN at the National Sevens Tournament in Welkom from 19 to 21 September.

Liam Theunissen won the Spur Series MTB league U14 category and is eligible to represent KZN.

Do you want to receive alerts regarding this and other Highway community news via Telegram? Send us a Telegram message (not an SMS) with your name and surname (ONLY) to 060 532 5409.

You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have signed up for our news alerts you need to save the Telegram number as a contact to your phone, otherwise you will not receive our alerts.

Here’s where you can download Telegram on Android or Apple.

To receive our free newsletter click here.