The Roncalli Girls First XI Hockey team showed that there are big things ahead with a fighting 6th at the Jenny McDonald Secondary School Girls Tier 4 Tournament held in Gore.

Leading up to the tournament, the Roncalli girls had come off a great local season. They achieved entry into the second division of the South Canterbury for the first time in a number of years, then won the round robin for that division and narrowly lost in the finals 2-1. For the tournament 5 new players needed to be blooded from the seconds due to unavailability of some girls (gone but not forgotten) and we were keen to improve on the 11th position achieve last year, with a target of 6th. 

We were placed in a pool of 3 with our first game against Buller being a great opener for us winning 9-2. The score belies the effort of Buller who continuously kept coming at us. Highlights included hat tricks to Phoebe Scarsbrook (Yr 11) and Charli Nevin (Yr 9) but more importantly how our new 5 team members really stepped up and fitted in seamlessly – well done girls. 

The next pool game against last year’s champions Waitaki Girls was a hard physical match with us being down 0-3 at half time. We mounted a real comeback in the second half, Mya Nevin (Yr12) executing a beautiful corner strike and (Yr 10) after having to come off following a ball to the throat, Kayla Wright returned and applied the “enough is enough” approach scoring two further goals on the back of some great team passing, including a one on one with the goal keeper. Eventually Waitaki was too good and pulled away to win 6-3. We did however came away with the nick name of the Comeback Queens from them after the game

Finishing second in our pool led us into the cross over play offs. Our roomies St Kevins were first up - they had beaten Waitaki in their local season so we knew that this game would be tough. Although at the final whistle we went down 0-3, we were really pleased with our performance. The game was full of action including - a (converted) penalty stroke against us for our player stopping a ball with their body (sacrifices being made by our defence) and our Goalkeeper Olivia Dunn (Yr 13) stopping a number of drag flicks (high speed penalty corner ball lifts). The team worked tirelessly but were unable to convert a number of penalty corner opportunities. St Kevin's deservedly went on to win the tournament.

Licking our wounds, this loss put us out of the Top 4 placings and a last chance to achieve a Top 6 position – to do this we needed to beat an unknown Riccarton side. It was great first half with us establishing a 2–0 lead. In the second half Riccarton poured it on getting back to a 2-2 score (a few nervous looks from the coaching crew) but the Comeback Queens maintained their cool and pushed out to a 4-2 lead involving some driving runs by Sophie Wilson (Yr 11) scoring 2 of the 4 goals. Despite Riccarton scoring a goal in a full time penalty corner, at the whistle it was all Roncalli. The girls were stoked and it was especially pleasing for us to see the leadership team on the field rally the troops when the pressure was on.

That night we held the Roncalli Girls Gores Got Talent show (rumour has it that TV viewing of the Block NZ dropped by 50% that evening) and parents can be rest assured that their girls all have back up entertainment skills if required later on in life – unlike the high intensity, but talent challenged adult group – remember girls what happens on camp stays on camp!

The final game for 5th and 6th position was against a hard driving Papanui team, a back and forth tussle for both teams. The end result was a 2-4 loss with the final Papanui goal coming in the last minute after we had been surging on attack a number of times – close but no cigar as they say. It was still a positive finish for the girls. Also on that final day Charli Nevin was selected as a “Most Valuable Player” by the Tournament Association based upon her tirelessly work rate and attacking style during the games – well done Charli !

So overall a very enjoyable and successful tournament – the girls played a lot of great hockey, were able to find the back of the net in all games and achieved their team goal of a Top 6 finish, still enjoying themselves to the final game! Thanks to those parents that wrangled a way to make it to the turf to support us and our parent help Amanda (Top Chef) Scarsbrook who made sure we were all well looked after – it was greatly appreciated!

The team were as follows: Annabelle Cairns / Cameron Murphy / Charli Nevin / Grace Scarsbrook / Hannah Light / Hayley Esler / Iona Hay – Fourmond / Issy Errington / Issy Light / Kayla Wright / Kelsey Sugrue / Mya Nevin (Captain) / Olivia Dunn / Phoebe Scarsbrook / Sophie Wilson