In its eighth appearance, Ferrrum High School finished eighth overall at the SPAR KZN School Girls’ Hockey Challenge.
In its pool, Ferrum met defending champion, St Mary’s DSG (Highway Regional Winners), Epworth School (PMB Central Regional Winners), and teams that also travelled to the tournament – Wartburg Kirchdorf School (Umvoti, uThukela and Umzinyathi Regional Winners) and Kokstad College (Southern KZN Regional Winners).
In its first game of the tournament, Ferrum took on Wartburg, where at the end of full-time, the score was 1 – 1. In the local team’s second game against Epworth, it battled to get the attack out of the circle, as the Pietermaritzburg school dominated, slotting in six goals. In a riveting match against the defending champion, Ferrum pulled a rabbit out of the hat, scoring a surprise goal mid-game and drawing first blood. For agonising minutes, Ferrum held strong as St Mary’s tried to get off the back foot and try to break the Ferrum defence.
The host school netted four quick-fire goals as the clock wound down to the end of the game, with the final score being 4 -1 to the champs.
In the last pool game, Ferrum went up against Kokstad, and finishing the day as it started, the game ended level with both teams scoring one goal.
On Sunday, in the very first cross-pool playoff, Ferrum met Crawford La Lucia, which didn’t wait long to find the back of the net. At the end of full-time, Crawford had managed to score two goals, sending Kokstad into the final playoff for position seven and eight.
Here Kokstad met Richards Bay’s Felixton College. Felixton managed to go 1 – 0 up and then defend its score, with the whistle blowing and snaffling the seventh place, meaning Kokstad would have to settle of eighth overall.
The SPAR KZN School Girls’ Hockey Challenge took place at St Mary’s DSG on July 20 and 21. Sophie Thompson provided a recap of the finals weekend:
Namibian Kiana Cormack netted a cracker of a goal that earned her team, St Mary’s DSG, the 2019 SPAR KZN School Girls’ Hockey Challenge title for the fifth time, in a 1 – 0 win against St Anne’s College.
With just over 12 minutes in the second half remaining, Cormack lurked at the top of the castle, ready to pounce on the injection of the second short corner of the game. After a clean stop, the captain swung into action, firing in a tournament winning drag flick that rocketed into the top right hand corner beyond the outstretched gloves of St Anne’s keeper, Ella Thorburn.
A jubilant Cormack explained: “I don’t usually score drag flicks, so this is the first tournament where I actually pulled it off. I wasn’t expecting it, nobody was but it felt right from the moment I released it and it was a phenomenal feeling watching it go.”
“We went out there knowing it was going to be a tough game – they always are against St Anne’s but it actually was a lot of fun, exciting and intense.”
St Mary’s dominated most of the gold medal game, with St Anne’s getting a few runs down to the other end when it had space. In the first half, a surge saw St Anne’s hitting the left upright with a drag flick attempt in the first five minutes of the game.
In a last gasp attempt, Lusanda Mtshali broke away mid field, striding towards the circle. On the very tip of the circle, her charge was agonisingly stopped by a St Mary’s defender’s foot, the whistle blowing with three seconds on the clock. As the offence happened outside the circle, Mtshali’s valiant effort fell centimeters short from an extra time short corner.
In the bronze medal game, Durban Girls’ College met Epworth School for the second year running at the Grand Finals.
Only 10 minutes were left when Grade 11 star, Bulelwa Mzimela was perfectly in place for a fantastic base line run and a quick-fire pass up to Mzimela waiting on the P who confidently tapped in her shot to take the win for the local team. College added to their impressive history in this tournament, notching up its first third this year after nine Grand Final appearances.
Their name appears on the trophy three times and they also have three silvers and two fourths from previous years.
In the first semi-final, St Anne’s met Epworth for an all round Maritzburg game. Sophie Rebeck and Lusanda Mtshali scored for St Anne’s giving them a 2 – 0 victory giving them their third opportunity in the main game at the Grand Finals. In the inaugural tournament in 2011, they earned themselves gold with a silver in last year’s tournament.
In the second semi-final, St Mary’s took on local rival, Durban Girls’ College. College held off St Mary’s for most of the first half but in the final minute Cerian Fourie netted her team’s first. Cormack advanced the scoring to 2 nil and Fourie got her second of the game to take the game away from College with the final score of 3 – 0.
After two days of diverse weather at the 99th overall KZN tournament, 29 games were played with a total of 72 goals being scored in 710 minutes of passionate first team schoolgirls’ hockey at its finest. The first tournament in 2020 rolls the tournament counter over to the milestone of 100.
Results:
1. St Mary’s DSG,
2. St Anne’s College,
3. Durban Girls’ College,
4. Epworth School,
5. Crawford La Lucia,
6. Kokstad College,
7. Felixton College,
8. Ferrum High School,
9. Wartburg Kirchdorf School,
10. Amanzimtoti High School.
ALSO READ: SPAR KZN School Girls’ Hockey Challenge wrap up
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