Winter Quad Exchange 2021
On Sunday, 35 students travelled to Christchurch to compete in the annual Winter Quadrangular Tournament with our sister schools, Columba College, Craighead Diocesan & host St Margaret's College. We were there to compete in Hockey, Netball, Badminton and Debating. This is always a highlight on our sports calender and holds many memories for those that participate in it.
Hockey: Monday's competition saw the team play Columba and Craighead. It was a miserable cold winter's day with snow flurries, hail and rain all mixed into one. But the teams played through with our team coming away with a 1-1 draw against Columba and a 3-0 win against Craighead. The next morning was the top game versus St Margs. This is always a tough one, as SMG play in the Federation Cup - which is a higher level tournament to the one our team will head to in a few weeks. Our girls were incredibly focused and motivated and this showed in the first half. We had more attacking moments and better defence. At half time the score was 0-0 . After half time, we expected a more determined SMG team to come out, but our girls stood up against any pressure and created more themselves, with two great goals from SHCS we took the game 2-0. This meant that we brought home the Hockey Quad banner which we haven't done since 2014.
Netball: Monday's games saw our senior A team take on Columba and then St Margaret's. After a close first quarter against Columba, the players came out firing during the second and turned the game around and with some slick attack and hovering defence, SHCS game away with a comfortable win. A short turn around till the second game meant not much recovery time for what was to be a close battle with St Marg's. With the score line close the whole game and only 2-3 goals in it, it came down to a highly intense last quarter. Unfortunately, the first few minutes proved too much for the girls and we went down by 1 goal. After a good nights sleep, we came out Tuesday morning and had a good win against Craighead. The team have been on a busy schedule over the past 10 days and looking forward to a slower couple of weeks until SISS.
Debating: Our debating team have three debates over the two days, topics included social media and filter bubbles and rehab programmes for criminals. Debating is not something that I have watched much of, but it is quite interesting watching the debaters stand up and challenge the opposing team on their points. Well done to Emily, Lily and Shreya for bringing home the debating banner.
Badminton: With four players from Y9-13, we started the day out with a match against Craighead, where there were a number of tight games and the players definitely warmed into the competition. Over the course of the day, our players faced some tough match ups with Columba and St. Margaret’s, and through these games will have learned a lot about competitive Badminton. Farrin Quin was our standout player, in both her skills, where she won all her individual matches, and in her support of our and the other teams' players. She will be sorely missed from the team next year.
Overall, St Hilda's came second overall, missing out by just 0.5 points! It was a wonderful two days away and I hope all those involved had a great experience as well. We now look forward to hosting Winter Quad 2022 and Summer 2023.