The Football First XI team were victors at the Gary Sowden South Island Satellite Tournament during winter sports week at the end of August. This is the second year in a row that OGHS has won this tournament.

We are really proud of the girls in the way they worked as a team, played hard physically and maintained the strong, competitive desire to win. Adjusting to the warm Christchurch sunshine was also challenging after playing our last few games in Dunedin in rainy conditions and cold temperatures!

The girls played six games over 4 days. The tournament started with solid wins over Carmel College 6-0 and Villa Maria College 4-0. We played Hillmorton High School in a world class facility on artificial turf, beating them 6-0. The girls were very excited to play in a proper stadium with fantastic facilities. This placed Otago Girls’ at the top of their pool. We then played Hornby High School in the quarter finals winning 7-0 and then played arguably our toughest game against Lincoln High School in the semi final winning a very tense game 1-0. We played Marlbourgh Girls’ in the final in front of a large crowd and scored early in the first half. We held on to win 1-0. It was fantastic to see the girls go unbeaten in the tournament with no goals scored against them.

Well done to Sophie Dijkstra (Year 11) who was voted our team’s Most Valuable Player by opposition teams, Tahlia Roome (Year 10) who was our top goal scorer and also scored the winning goal in the final as well as Jade Middleditch (Year 12) who had the extra hard job of being captain as well as goalkeeper. All girls played extremely well despite injuries with everyone taking the field in the final. We are so proud of you all!

I would like to thank Eddie Dijkstra for being an outstanding and inspiring coach throughout the season, Liz Dijkstra and Carolyn Bezett for helping me to manage the team, keeping our bellies full and being camp mums! Also a huge thanks to all the parents who travelled to Christchurch to support us and helped out at the grounds and motel - we really appreciate you all! Overall it was very satisfying to send off our two Year 13 girls with a tournament win and to have a future that looks very bright with the majority of our team being in Year 10. Bring on Nationals in 2017!