The Columba College Junior B team arrived in Invercargill with very little experience. They are a young team, comprised of all year 9 players, with the exception of the year 10 captain and setter, Tayla Finlay. It was a gruelling week with up to 9 games against some of the South Island’s best teams.

We set a realistic goal of top 8 in Division 2 which had about 20 teams entered. Day one started off well with a 2-1 win over Christchurch Girls' B team. Next up was Craighead Diocesan’s A team. We struggled with their unconventional style and their top player played a remarkable game, handing us the loss 20-25 and 21-25. We regrouped later in the day and scored a clutch 2-0 win against Southland Girls' High School A.

Day 2 started with a relatively easy win over Verdon Girls'. In a stroke of luck, Southland Girl's beat Craighead 2-1 which bumped Columba College up to 1st place in our pool! We had achieved our initial goal of top 8.

Our top-8 crossover games started against James Hargest B where we lost the first set but came back strong to win the next two games. We then played Burnside B and won two straight sets 25-22 & 25-10. We later lost to a very strong serving Cashmere team but had secured 2nd place in the crossover pool and a spot inside the top 4!

Our second place ranking matched us up with Bayfield A in the semi-final. Bayfield had beaten us convincingly at the Otago Championships a few weeks prior so it was going to take 100% focus and capitalising on everything we had learned in this tournament to pull off an upset win. We did it! It was a great game with plenty of long rallies and some great serving and hits. Columba B won two straight sets against Bayfield A and had earned a spot in the final against Cashmere.

The Cashmere team was the hard serving team that we had just lost to earlier in the day. Our nerves got the best of us in game 1 and we struggled to deal with their serves and our emotions. In game 2, the team regrouped and kept it close (20-21 at one stage) but Columba eventually lost 20-25.

The improvement over the past few weeks has been nothing short of stunning and our young B team came away with silver medals! Equally impressive, Sophie Tizard and Kayla Smith went on to win the year 9 beach volleyball trophy the next day! There is a big future in store for Junior volleyball at Columba College.