After 8 years of disappointments and near misses, I finally got a team to qualify for honours at AVSC. Willunga’s U15 girls team played valiantly over the weekend to claim the “third slot” in honours and, for the first time will get to enjoy playing against the best teams on the best courts in best of 5 set matches. I cannot describe how happy I am at the moment.
It was probably the first time I got to work with a bunch a kids at Willunga who all had the ability and the willingness to go for it, so all credit to them (my apologies to everyone I have ever pushed to qulaify for honours who didn’t really want to!).
Besides us there were two Heathfield and two Brighton teams competing to get in. There were some pretty exciting matches. We lost our first game against the top Brighton team by a point on countback after taking the first set 28-26. We nearly lost to the second Brighton team on the last day winning the first set from 23-20 down, and the second set from 23-19 down.
So to Elke, Brianna, Georgie, Myriah, Maddy S, Maddy L, Jess, Morgan, Carly, and your coach, Shantel, well done! You are Willunga High School’s FIRST honours team in its 13 years of competing in the cup! You’ve done us all proud and made one particular tragic very happy. We got plenty of work still to do!
PS. thanks to steph for helping me out at trainings, and princi for putting the extra work in. Couldn’t have gotten there without you guys!
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I also spent much of the weekend working with our U16 girls team who have been training a lot with our U15s. Whilst they didn’t win a game, there were some really positive things to take out of the tournament. In the end it was some skill areas that let them down, but i think we can definitely work on those and have a good tournament in AVSC.
My open boys went down to a second Heathfield side in the gold medal match. They have a boom German recruit that is making a big difference. The U16 boys came 4th and our U17 girls have the option of playing honours given that only 3 teams entered into the honours comp. Meanwhile, Princi’s open girls had a mixed tournament and we’re banking on the white line fever to take over when they get to Melbourne. They’ll be playing open div 2 and we’ll be hoping to make another medal in it this year.
My commiserations to Heathfield’s U15 Honours girls who lost the gold medal to Brighton. Heathfield had the hottest game all tournament (tight passing, classy setters, a quick attack to envy and of course, Georgie Rowe) but were beaten by a raging Brighton team that couldn’t seem to do anything wrong (except set the ball cleanly at times). See y’all in Melbourne!
