STC Futsal 2017

Futsal at St Thomas’s has been growing within the school gaining recognition and popularity. After last year’s success for the juniors winning the national title.  The seniors learnt vital lessons and what it will take to compete and win at the highest level. Going into the 2017 season with new look teams as 75% of the winning junior team stepped up to the senior team, also long serving members of STC Jacob, Jamie, Martin and Sean exiting the school after graduating. We had an exciting year ahead of us with lots of potential and development.

With great coaches James, Shannon, Mr Allan and Mr Washington we had everything to play for and nothing to lose. Starting training early in the year we had time to bond and understand how each other played and also how Coach James wanted us to play. The new gym provided us with everything we needed and more to knuckle down and get to business and not worry about where we would be training or if the gym was busy with anything else going on. 

With each and every training the boys improved and had fun while at it. Once it came to competition time. Regionals were our first test to see if we were good enough to compete with the best teams. Game by game and win by win we gained confidence and knew we belonged here and were going to settle for nothing other than first. Making it to the final was just the start and our rivals St Andrews weren’t going to make it easy on us and be pushed over without a fight. Playing at a packed out Ara everyone was fizzing and ready to get stuck into Stac. We started a pace ahead of Stac and never took our foot off the gas. Coming out clear winner. A complete team effort. Standouts were our year 11 boys who didn’t look out of place one bit and were the difference between the two sides.

Nationals was a tough time Finishing 6th out 32 teams, losing in a heart-breaking quarter final to a team we would beat at the First X1 nationals. The boys gave it everything, but it just wasn’t to be for us, playing with no real goalie the whole tournament and losing a key player in Tom Stewart after pool play was just too much. Special mention must go to Aasiah Rai and Michael White who made the men’s Canterbury Dragons for futsal.

Bring on 2018 with a group of year 12s and hopefully a fully fit goal keeper.

Michael White -Captain