Meet Jade Brandis, Captain of The Wykeham Collegiate first X1 hockey team.
Thirteen top Pietermaritzburg hockey teams will battle it out for two regional titles in the 9th SPAR School Girls’ Hockey Tournament on Sunday 3 March. The Wykeham Collegiate will host the northern regionals and St John’s D.S.G the central regionals.
Jade Brandis, the Wykeham Collegiate’s first team hockey captain, is excited about the team’s upcoming challenge. The team once held the title in 2012, but were ousted by St. Anne’s the following year, with Saints having dominated this regional. “But at the end of the day it is all about hockey, how we play and the learnings we take from these tournaments,” she says. “The SPAR tournament is one of our year highlights and is always an enjoyable and exciting event”
Jade is something of a “mean sporting machine”, besides a love for outdoor hockey she also is captain of the first indoor hockey team, and has played provincially for KZN’s U12, U13 and U16 hockey teams, while also finding gaps in her busy diary to cycle and play tennis.
Equally at home in the classroom and on the sports field, Jade has colours for both academics and hockey, and cites completing the gruelling Fish River Canoe Marathon in 2016 and three Midmar Miles as some of her sporting highlights.
Jade enjoys the many leadership roles she plays at school. With two hockey captaincies she is also Head of House, was Head of the Junior Hall, and is Head of the School’s Chamber of Commerce.
Hailing from the farming community of Underberg, Jade says she began playing hockey in Grade one at the local primary school there, and she says that the thing she most enjoys about hockey is “the energy, encouragement and passion within our team.”
Going out onto the field, is not always about the win she believes, with some wise words coming from her coaches. “They inspire us to be humble in our victories, and find the good in our losses, but in any event many lessons will be learnt during the matches.”
The gutsy twelfth grader, says that her favourite subject is Consumer Studies, as she loves to learn about health and nutrition and then implementing that into great meals. “I am hoping to study Consumer Science when I leave school, and then use that to travel and work.”
When she is not playing one of the myriad sports or pushing ahead with academic commitments, Jade loves to cook, bake, play her guitar, cycle, hike and runs with her dogs.
It seems though the sporting success runs in her family’s veins with her father, Brian, cycling competitively and her sister, Samantha, playing U14 provincial hockey as well as being on the provincial equestrian team.
Jade says that celebrated tennis player Rodger Federer is her all time sporting role model as “I have witnessed his amazingly good sportsmanship from a very young age.”
Heading for the PMB North Regionals, win or lose, Jade shares the words she lives by: “Everything happens for a reason” and “It’s all about confidence.”
The Pietermaritzburg North Regionals, which features TWC, St Anne’s College Voortrekker High, Grace College, Howick High and Treverton, takes place on Sunday 3 March at The Wykeham Collegiate. Fixtures will be published on the SPAR School Girls’ Hockey Facebook page.
-ends
Caption to photo by Jonathan Burton:
TWC’s 1st Hockey X1 Captain Jade Brandis gets ready for the PMB northern regionals of the SPAR School Girls’ Hockey Challenge, hosted by her school on March 3.