By Swara D and Yeeting G, Year 7

On Wednesday 29th of January, our U12A team went to play in a GDST netball rally. After an early morning start and a long drive there, we finally arrived at Oxford High School. Once we got there, we warmed up (despite being super cold) and were ready to play. Our first game was against the hosts, Oxford and we won this comfortably. We then had 5 more matches against all of the other schools, Northwood, Howells, Royal Bath and Portsmouth, where we won comfortably, and Wimbledon who we narrowly beat by 1 goal. After winning all of our games, this put us top of the total table and put us into the cup section for the rest of the tournament. 

Our team was on a huge high after winning these games but we needed to keep our heads for the next section of the day. After having lunch, we went back out onto the courts for our warm up. We were due to play Howells, Portsmouth and Wimbledon again as they were also in the cup. Our first game was then against Howells where we kept our heads and won respectively. We then played Portsmouth and also beat them. At this point of the day, we had played 8 matches and were getting very tired on the court. We had a lot of nerves and adrenaline running through our bodies but we knew if we won this next game that it would mean we would win the whole tournament. Our match started against Wimbledon who were a very tough opposition. Our whole team was working so hard to get the ball down to goal and score but so were the opposition. At half time, we had a 1 goal lead. Unfortunately in the first few minutes of the next half, we let Wimbledon get a 2 goal lead but we thought to ourselves “we want this more than them” and so we did. We fought so hard in the last few minutes, scoring goals and defending our own, that when the final bell went, we all screamed “yes!” in delight as we knew we had won. The final score was 11-8 to us and we were ecstatic for this to be our first tournament win of senior school.

We were handed our bright, shiny gold medals during the rewards ceremony and were congratulated by the U12A football team who also came along with us for their own tournament. Then, with our medals (and spirits) held high, we hopped back onto the bus for the way home. Overall, this experience made us realise that if we really want something and if we put our mind to it, we can achieve anything as a team.