On Friday, the U13 Girls Hockey team competed in the IAPS National Finals at Repton School in Derbyshire. After reaching the last 16 of the National ISHC Cup on Tuesday, the girls travelled up on Thursday evening to prepare ahead of a tough day.
With a very hard pool, the girls got off to a 0-0 draw in a closely fought match with Dean Close. After a nice break, they faced a tough 3 matches, all close together. A 2-1 win over Downsend saw the girls show great character before beating The Downs 4-0 with a brilliant display of attacking hockey.
Immediately afterwards, we headed to the sand-based pitch to face Winchester House, unfortunately, losing 1-0. Going into our final game, the just needed a draw to reach the quarter-finals of the Cup but unfortunately lost 2-1 to The Oratory.
As a result, we faced Lambrook in the Quarter-Final of the Plate, comfortably winning 2-0. In the semi-final, the girls faced Northampton and after a tense match, scored a late goal to seal a 2-0 win to set up a rematch with Winchester in the Final.
The Final was an extremely tense match with Winchester having lots of chances with Danes Hill defending brilliantly. With just a couple of minutes left, Danes Hill sprung a counter attach to break through the Winchester defence and score to win the game 1-0.
The girls played brilliantly throughout the day and thoroughly deserved to be crowned National Plate Champions.
Congratulations to all of the girls that competed throughout the competition!
