Swan Coral runners up

On a cool and blustery bank holiday Saturday morning, Coral travelled to the Oasis Academy in Southampton for a tournament hosted by Weston Park Blades. This was the second tournament of the week as we had participated in a challenging, high level tournament against Berkshire clubs on Sunday 23rd April. This experience had given the team a much better idea of what to expect in a tournament particularly as we had learnt it was so important to be fired up and determined to play well from the very beginning.

The tournament was divided into three pools and Coral were competing in pool B against Swaythling U10s, WPB U11s, Poole and Team Matrix 2. Each match was eight minutes long and so shooting the most goals as quickly as possible in the time was going to be essential. The experience of the previous tournament helped us greatly and right from the start the team were mentally prepared and physically much more energised. There was some excellent passing by the mid court players, strong defence and superb shooting. As a result, Coral won the group with the following scores.
Coral vs Poole 5-2
Coral vs WPB U11s 10-3
Coral vs Team Matrix 2 5-2
Coral vs Swaything U10s 9-0

After the three pools had finished playing the teams were divided into Bronze, Silver and Gold. The top 5 teams’ scores from all three pools went into the Gold group so Coral had some tough matches ahead of them. We began this round by playing Poole’s first team and with excellent shooting and strong decision making we won 6-4. We then went on to play a team who had travelled from Jersey to participate in the tournament and in a well fought match where the defence was very strong against a quick centre and WA we were able to get the ball into the circle and score 9 great goals to Jersey’s 5. The next match was against the Jelly Babies’ U11 and we were beginning to get quite tired but as we were a squad of 10 the girls were great at adapting and changing positions. They were determined to win and achieved a result of 4-2. With one match to go, Coral were in a very strong position to win the tournament and Team Matrix 1 had drawn their match with Poole so we knew that we had a good chance of winning against them. It was very intense and nerve racking to watch and both teams were fighting for every ball. The match was so close, with Coral going ahead in the first half but then Matrix fought back to even the score and with tired legs we were finding it harder to keep up with them. Both teams were equally matched in ability but Matrix were just a bit more resilient and so the final score was Team Matrix 4 – Coral 2.

So overall, Team Matrix 1 achieved first place and Coral achieved an excellent second place out of 15 teams.

We started playing together 18 months ago and have made fantastic progress and we are gaining a lot of experience from playing a variety of teams. The girls love playing and being coached by Jilly and we would like to thank her for all her support and coaching. Well done to all the girls for practising each week and for supporting each other in the squad. (particularly Immie Nichols, who came to support the team after she was injured in the Berkshire tournament last Sunday) Finally, thank you to Jenny Hines who is our team manager and to all the parents for transporting and supporting the team.