Tournament Report from Klaudia South:

On Friday, six of us West Coast girls, four from Grey High - Klaudia South, Jenna Williams, Alyssa Blacktopp and Jenna Mahukia-Apperly and two from John Paul II Mikayla Stevenson and Losa Leleifua travelled down to Timaru to compete in the South Island Secondary School's U19 Girls 7’s tournament, in which there were 11 teams in total. The six of us combined with a Geraldine High School team who had seven players to make a full team. Since we were both short on numbers and this meant we could both still play in the tournament. Due to us combining we had the luck of having two amazing coaches - Rob Maitland from the West Coast and Jason from Geraldine with us for the day.

It was a tough day out on the field and we had some really close games throughout the day. We managed to come away with the win in our first pool game against Timaru GirlsHigh School who had previously lost to Southland Girls High School. We then faced Southland for our second pool game and lost that one, however we were still in a good position for our semi final. We then came against Craighead Diocesan School in which we just won this game with not long left on the clock to give us a place in the 5th/6th playoff. This playoff happened to be against Timaru Girls HS girls again and they put up a heck of a fight, the game was close throughout try for try and thinking that we had it in the bag in the last play of the game Timaru did a chip and chase and managed to score which then drew us even, and they had to convert to win, in which they did. But have to give them props for that as it was flawless. 

Overall it was an awesome tournament and the girls left their hearts out in the field which resulted in some very, very sore bodies for the next following days. Given that we had not trained or played with the Geraldine girls and still managed to come away with 6th overall is something for us all to be proud of and I can’t wait to see how the girls do next year in the tournament!