During winter sports week the Columba Senior A Netball Team were down in Invercargill competing in the South Island Secondary Schools netball championships.
In total the team played 8 games in 4 days. Days 1, 2 and 3 contained pool games. Our first pool was with Cromwell College, Geraldine High School, and St Kevin’s College. We went through as top of this pool after winning all three games meaning we went into the top 16 and into another pool with Marlborough Girls, Nelson Girls, and Villa Maria.
This second pool became must-win games if we wanted to achieve our goal of making it to nationals and getting into the top 4. Our closest game over the first 3 days was against Villa Maria which was our final game on Wednesday. The final result of this game was 43-31 meaning that we had made the top 4 and qualified for nationals.
On Thursday morning we had our semi-final against Christchurch Girls High School. There were plenty of nerves leading into this game but as soon as the game started these were gone and we got into our work eventually winning the game 43-17, the team was full of excitement as we had made the final! This was the first Columba final at this event in history.
The final was against quad rivals and defending champions St Margaret's College from Christchurch, who we had beaten early in the year, but that didn’t count for anything and they showed us that if we wanted it we were going to have to play hard as we went down 13-5 after the first quarter. We brought it back to make each quarter score closer together before going up in the game for the first time with 2 minutes but the result was 28 all at full-time.
This meant that we had to go to overtime and this extra time would continue until a team was up by 2. St Margaret's had the first centre pass in overtime which we broke and scored. They then broke our centre pass back before we regained possession again to bring it back and score it meaning we became SISS champs winning 30-28. This result is the first time in history that Columba has won this title.
Congratulations to Holly McCrae, Brenna Lyons, Emilie Nicolson, and Millie Scott who played outstanding all tournament and received a talented player selection.
We now attend nationals in Auckland from October 3rd-6th.