Kicking off the day with a long warm up to heat us up in chilly Oxford, our Y7 netball team prepared for an active day of netball matches. The matches were successful with the rest of the team cheering on the sidelines rejoicing as the ball flew into the goal and all encouraged their teammates to continue chasing after their players.

Everyone showed great sportsmanship throughout the day, encouraging their teammates at every available time. This was whether to help pick them back up when they were slightly down heartened if they missed a shot or interception or to celebrate with them when they became victorious towards their target. The subs on the sidelines would cheer so loud that by the end of the day all our voices were almost gone.

After a busy morning of netball matches, our confidence and determination levels were boosted for the rest of the afternoon which was when we were to compete for the cup. There were three matches to determine the winner.

Following two successful matches, we faced NHEHS in the final. We had recently played NHEHS at a friendly match and they had won, this meant going into the rounds previously, we were determined to reclaim the win. Unfortunately, they had just edged another win by one point. This meant that when we faced them in the final, we were ready to take it the whole way. But unfortunately for us, so where they. Everyone was playing their best and fighting at every opportunity given and using it to our advantage. Every time they took over by one goal, we would push ourselves to earn the goal back. Finally, after the heated match, NHEHS come victorious. Our player of the match was Maya F, who had jumped for each interception and had shown great sportsmanship throughout the day.

Though we were disappointed at how close the score line was, we were also proud to have played NHEHS twice before and lost but not let that influence what we thought was going to happen in the final. We thought of it as a new game and what happened in the previous one was in the past.

Altogether, the team worked hard throughout the day while co-operating a lot even when the score was not on our side. The team’s resilience stayed strong, and they did not go down without a fight.

In the end we happily came second.

Report from Eva and Maya