St Anne’s College
In their eighth appearance at the Grand Finals of the SPAR KZN Schoolgirls’ Hockey Challenge, St Anne’s College earned themselves a successful second place.
In a repeat of last year, St Anne’s earned themselves silver against St Mary’s DSG in a highly competitive end to the Grand Finals. In their second consecutive medal meeting, St Anne’s lost by the narrowest of margins, one spectacular St Mary’s drag flick that found the back of the net was the only goal in this year’s gold silver game. St Anne’s held strong compared to the 2018 final where they went down by 3 goals in a game that the host school dominated.
Robin Jones, passionate Coach for St Anne’s stated, “Our weekend started off slow but we are very grateful to be back at such a wonderful event. We had quite a few players missing due to top school squash commitments which resulted in a nice opportunity to give some of our younger girls a chance to play and I am extremely proud of them.”
“We are incredibly happy to be at this event, it is a wonderful initiative. It is wonderful to be back and of course making it to the final. I believe we competed more in this year’s medal match than last years. With only one special goal by a special player separating the two teams. The standard was fantastic in the gamed and we can only grow from strength to strength as a school, and as a province because of events like this.”
The Hilton based team were drawn in Pool B where they met Durban Girls’ College (DBN Central Regional Winner), Crawford La Lucia (DBN North Regional Winners), Amanzimtoti High School (DBN South Regional Winners) and Felixton College from Richards Bay (North Coast Regional).
In their first game, St Anne’s secured a gentle win of 1 nil against Felixton, building on this they went 2 nil up against Crawford. In their big game against three times tournament winners, Durban Girls’ College, St Anne’s earned themselves a respectable 1 all draw. Ending off their first day, they pounced on every opportunity netting 6 fantastic goals dominating from start to finish in their last pool game against Toti.
Finishing on top of the log, day two started off with a meeting in the first semi-final against Epworth School who finished second in their pool. Sophie Rebeck and Lusanda Mtshali notched up two goals for their team, giving St Anne’s the grand ticket to the gold silver medal game.
St Anne’s College – Pietermaritzburg North Regional Winner - Gold (2011), Silver (2018, 2019), Bronze (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017), Fourth (2013)