Plymouth Schools Netball Finals
This week, Ben has been to Marjons with the school Netball team to play in two tournaments and they did extremely well in them both!
On Monday, the tournament was for about 12 school teams in Plymouth who had done best in the previous couple of tournaments that had been held before Christmas and Bickleigh was up there amongst the best. So, they played 6 games on Monday, with Ben being the Captain, and won all of them apart from the last one, which they drew 3-3, even though it looked like the opposing team’s goal actually didn’t go through the net but bounced back out from the pole behind. The penultimate game they won 10-0 which was great as I arrived in time to watch that one! There was a lot of controversy though and Mr Martin and Miss Ingram were not impressed. The students who were refereeing were not very good and didn’t know the rules at certain times which was making things worse as the players didn’t know what was happening on occasions which was getting them frustrated! Ben scored a few goals in the early stages of the games. When I made it up to Marjons to watch the last couple of games, he was mostly in defence, so I didn’t see him score any unfortunately. Kelly wasn’t able to go and watch him this time as she was doing some training for her new job, which was a shame. Anyway, they ended up winning the tournament that day and got some nice gold medals and certificates. Ben, and the other team members, received them during assembly on Wednesday morning. Winning the tournament qualified them for the Plymouth Finals on Thursday!
So on Thursday, there were 6 teams that played, as there were 2 tournaments on Monday. The top 3 from each tournament went through to the finals. Again, I was able to walk up to watch and Kelly was able to come with me this time, but they had got the times wrong! So by the time we had got there, they had finished and the presentations were taking place. We were very annoyed to say the least!! Apparently Marjons had told the schools the wrong finish time and it was actually an hour earlier, which meant we missed it all. Anyway, we watched the presentations through the window and were glad to see that Bickleigh came 3rd overall, which now qualifies them for the Devon finals in Torbay in March, which means we can both go and watch him that day! Yippee!! Eventually, we were able to go into the court and find out how they had done. They had won their first 3 matches easily but then got hammered 6-0 by Plymstock, who are their main rivals and are a very good team. They then lost the final game by the odd goal, which was a shame. But, again, there was controversy, as the organisers apparently didn’t but the scores in properly!! So the top 2 teams at the time didn’t know who had won, even though a trophy had been given out to Hooe school. But then, later on after school, Ben said that they all actually had the same points so all 3 schools were joint first!! The officiating for these events is terrible and I hope it is much better for the Devon event! Oh well! Ben said that he scored some goals again but a couple of the teams were quite rough and Ben ended up shoving one lad out of the way as he was winding him up by elbowing him and everything! They were all disappointed in the end for not winning but Miss Ingram and Mr Martin were proud as they got through anyway and they all played well. Fingers crossed they have a good run at the Devon Finals in March at Paignton!
UPDATE – today in assembly Miss Ingram confirmed that they actually did come joint 1st but ended up 3rd on goal difference, so they were so close to winning it!!
