Our Premier Netball team have had a great start to the season in a series of games that have been televised for the first time.

The girls’ first televised College Netball game was played in late March against Auckland Girls Grammar. This was the team’s first game together and despite it being so early on in pre-season, and having only recently begun work with new coach, Ms Nicola Lewis, they were delighted to win 39-22.

A special mention should go to our shooters, Amorangi Malesala (captain) and Sydney Fraser who shot very well during this game. Amorangi’s statistics were 25 from 28 (89%) and Sydney shot 14 from 16 (88%).  Amorangi was awarded Player of the Match, receiving a voucher for a pair of ASICS netball trainers.

Their next game was a non-televised game held at the AMI Netball Centre in late April against Sacred Heart Girls College where once again the girls were victorious. Agai our shooters performed well with both Amorangi and Malia Pusiaki shooting 100% of their shots in the position of GS and Sydney shooting 73%.  

Our quarter final game was against Mount Albert Grammar (MAGS), a team that has only lost one game in 5 years -  to Saint Kentigern College in last year’s Auckland final. It was a great opportunity to play such a strong team so early on in the season and get an idea of where we are and what we need to do to improve. We started well and came off at quarter time level 8-8. A loss of concentration and some errors in the second quarter allowed MAGS to head into half time with an 8 goal lead. This was always going to be a challenge to get back as the quarters were only 8 minutes long. We won the third quarter 7-9 but MAGS were the eventual winners taking the game 35-26. All the team deserve a mention for their performance but, defensively, Kristina Tipene (GK) was outstanding, taking many tips and intercepts against a strong and experienced MAGS GS (Maia Wilson).

Fortunately, regardless of the result, both teams were put through to the semi-finals where we faced the South Island team, Southland Girls High School. We dominated most of the game and won 39-23. Amorangi scored 32 of these goals and Kristina Tipene again had a strong game winning Player of the Match on this occasion.

The final will take place on June 1^st 2015 at the Trusts Arena in Henderson v MAGS.

We are delighted to be in our first final of the year and look forward to playing MAGS again. We have worked hard at looking at our errors of improvement and can’t wait to put them into action against such strong opposition.

Two of our players, Sydney and Amorangi, have been selected to represent NZ Secondary Schools in the Trans-Tasman U19 Tournament which will be held in Rotorua 26^th-28^th May. The girls go into camp this Friday. Good luck girls!

Kristina Tipene has already had an opportunity for international play when she was selected to captain New Zealand in the Aotearoa Maori Secondary Schools team at an international tournament in Malaysia where they won gold! Well done Tipene!

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