On Monday our Junior Netball Team attended their first NI Blitz of the new season. The girls faced 4 other schools. The Blitz was at Fivemiletown and comprised Fivemiletown, St Fanchea’s, Mount Lourdes, St Ciaran’s, Ballygawley and us.
Games were 2 halves of 10 minutes which gave the girls ample time to settle into their games’ play.
Game 1 was against Fivemiletown themselves and it was a good match to start with. It allowed the girls to adjust to the court and settle into a nice rhythm of play. Our shooters were on great form enabling us to win the match 13-3.
After a few matches where the girls watched, and I umpired other matches, we returned to the court. This time we faced Mount Lourdes – always a strong rivalry here. The team were strong as they started out with quite a high-paced first half leaving the scores at 5-4. After half time, the pace of the game showed us where our fitness was lacking. We lost the thread of the play and ended up with a score of 11-5 to Mount Lourdes.
Picking our heads up and having a few positional changes, we faced St Fanchea’s. The girls were determined to not let the previous score get them down. This was a slightly slower pace of a game which suited us better. Our girls were solid in both attack and defence with the final scoreline reflecting that 10-2 to ERGS.
Our last game was against St Ciaran’s, Ballygawley. We had never faced this team before and watched their matches keenly to see how they performed. They were a fast, nippy team who were quite a force to be reckoned with. The girls took to the court knowing they had to win this in order to get 2nd place. It was not a foregone conclusion and they had to keep themselves composed and careful not to make too many errors. With determination and skilful play, ERGS won the match 8-4.
This put the girls into 2nd position which then places them in the second division of their league. We await the draw after Halloween to announce who we will play next.
Congratulations to the Junior Team – Faith Nelson, Bella shaw, Julie Elliott, Sophie-Lily Griffiths-O’Hara, Andrea Johnston, Taliyah Honeyman, Hannah Kirkpatrick, Georgia Wilson, Madison Boyd, Khianna McFarland, Sarah Robinson, Sophia Nelson and Cerys Robinson
