National Netball Finals 2002

This year BRGS had two netball teams through to the National Finals on the 16th March, at the Velodrome in Manchester. The U14s and the U19s had qualified from two previous rounds, the Lancashire round and the Regional, Northwest round to take part in the finals. What happens is there are 18 teams in all the age groups and these are split into groups of 9. In your own group you play everyone and then the top two teams from both groups play a semi-final and then the two winners play a final to see who is the best school netball team in England.

The Under 19s:

U19: The team is Janine(c), Jenny, Lucy, Kate, Emily, Jenny, Hayley and Paula

The U19s had qualified strongly as winners from the Northwest round and we all had high hopes for them to do well. Unfortunately they came up against a very good side for their first match and ended up losing. However they then went on to win their next few matches and we were all confident that they would reach the semi-finals, but then there was a spanner thrown into the works and they faced a succession of very strong and competitive teams and so unfortunately they didn't manage to qualify for the semi's but they had played their very best and had done well to get to the National Finals in the first place. Well done!

The Under 14s:

U14: The team is Victoria (c), Scarlett, Emily, Anna, Nadia, Rachel, Hannah and Lucy.

The U14 had qualified from the Northwest round as runners up, but this wasn't to deter us.

Our first few matches we won easily and we started to enjoy ourselves. This winning streak wasn't to last long though, we lost our next match and we started to think that maybe we weren't good enough, however our form came back and we walked over the next team.

Again this didn't last long as we lost narrowly to a very good side. We kept checking the results board to see what place we were in and we worked out that we had to definitely win our last two matches to be in with a chance of qualifying, our last two matches were the top two teams on the results board. We played as we had never played before and beat both of them without giving Mrs Smith a heart attack!

We knew that we were in with a chance of qualifying now, and as the final matches of the group finished we realised that we were drawing in second place, and we knew that only two teams can qualify.

In the end it turned out that the other team qualified on goal average, they beat us by 0.2 of a goal! To make matters worse, the two teams who did qualify, we had beaten quite easily! Never mind there's always next year!

In the end it turned out that we came 5th in the whole of England. Well done!

Report by: Victoria Thornton