We were delighted that our U13 Football team qualified for the National Independent Schools Football Final at St George's Park, here is a report from Alva.

On the 18th of June, the under 13 football team took off to Nottingham where we were going to play the ISFA national finals in a super exciting tournament.

We went on the Wednesday and stayed overnight at an amazing house near where we were playing the next day. The drive up took around 3 and half hours which was quite a long time, but it was so fun! On the day of the tournament everyone was quite nervous as we all knew that all the teams had a high standard as we had to qualify and it was different teams all over the country.

We started our first match full of energy and were all very aggressive and first to the ball. We started of strong and scored 3 goals which was very exciting as they were a pretty good team. Everyone was playing so well, and we really pushed as a team! The second game went so well too as we played the ball around as a team and managed to score again, 3 goals which was incredible! We then found out that we were playing Surbiton and were quite nervous as they are a great team, but we didn't let that stop us. We started the game of strong holding the middle as Surbiton were playing the ball around us. They then got a goal, but we continued to create opportunities and almost scored a couple times. The score ended up being 1-0 which was so good as other teams had lost 3-0,4-0 and 2-1, even though we lost we were very happy with the result.

We then had our last match and had to do our best to go through to the semi-final. Early on we found out that the team we were playing were quite good, but we kept on fighting and created some wonderful opportunities. After a long 16 minutes the game ended up being 0-0. Soon after that we found out we were through, and we were all so proud of ourselves for coming this far!

We found out we were playing Beechwood in semi-final, the team we had lost to twice in the qualifiers. We gave it our all in the first 8 minutes fighting for every ball and being as strong as we could. We sadly conceded a couple of goals early on, but we all kept fighting! In the end the score was 5-0 to Beechwood but we were all so happy to have come this far. I am so proud of every single person who played in the tournament! We even had two younger players in year 7. Eira and Arianie who were incredible! We had Zoe in goal who hasn't really played much in that position, and she was phenomenal!

We all did so amazingly well, and we all fought so hard in every match, despite it being around 30 degrees. Thank you so much Miss Arch and Miss Coutts-Wood for making it such an unforgettable experience!