This season our team competed in the Wednesday night SSL grade in the Canterbury Hockey Association competition. Although we had mixed results in these weekly games, our team, as a whole, consistently improved each game.

This year we were lucky enough to be chosen as co-captains of the Burnside High School 1st XI Girls Hockey team, coached by Anna Wetherall and Gemma Sweeney and managed by Toni Maddaford.

This gave us a well linked, strong team heading into the Audrey Timlin Memorial Tournament in Nelson during Winter Tournament Week. We managed to get a few wins under our belts within the first two days of the tournament. This landed us in a game against Ashburton College, who went on to win the entire tournament. We held our own, but the game unfortunately ended in a close loss. In our last game, we fought out for 5th and 6th place and the girls played an incredible game as a team. Although we did not secure this win to finish off our season, we were very proud of the effort the team put in. It was an emotional last game for us year 13’s to finish off our time in this team. The Boys 1st XI were also competing in Nelson in the Johnson Cup tournament and provided us with lots of support and encouragement from the sidelines which was much appreciated. As always, the team had a fun time away at tournament and it was definitely a highlight of the season.

We wish the absolute best of luck to the girls next year at their tournament in Invercargill and hope they have a win-filled season. We would also like to give another thanks to our coaches, Anna Wetherall and Gemma Sweeney, and manager Toni Maddaford for all the time and work they have put into the team. We will miss the family culture of this team and can’t wait to see what the future holds for Burnsides’ Girls 1st XI team!

Lexi Cummings and Sophie Sugrue