The trip to Wellington for this year’s National Tournament was the culmination of 10 weeks training, in particular for the Senior team who had at times had 3 sessions a week under Tai Barham and Shelley Bowie’ s management. The senior team won the regional champs while the juniors came runners up to Hastings BHS. Pool play at Nationals was tough for the junior team as only 1 team from the group of 7 would get through along with the best placed team finishing 2nd in the group. Day 1 had four games played for two wins and two losses and with a further win and a loss on day 2 we were placed 4th in our pool and eleventh overall. Nelson College and Hutt International got through from the pool and ended up placing 3rd and 4th.
For the Seniors eight pools of four became a top/ bottom sixteen cross-overs, quarter finals, semis and then a final. Travelling through unbeaten and relatively untroubled until the semis a strong team effort was required to overcome Mt Albert Grammar by equalizing in the last seconds and then winning the penalty shoot out with a stand in keeper. The finals match against a determined and gutsy Kavanagh College didn’t go to the coaches script in that the team went 2-0 down, fought back to 2-2 at halftime, dropped away to 4-2 down, back to 4-3 and eventually lost 5-3, despite creating more chances and arguably being the better team. For most of this group reaching this stage was four years in the making and to stumble at the last step was really hard to take. As boys slumped to the floor at the final hooter the odd tear was shed.
