Today the Southill Netball Team had a fantastic opportunity to take part in a Hi-5 Bee Netball Skills and Rally in the glorious sunshine at Budmouth School.

We had a brilliant morning participating in activities run and led by Budmouth Year 10 Young Sports Leaders. These activities taught us how to improve and refine our skills in passing, pivoting, catcthing and landing, intercepting, shooting and linking up as a team.

Everyone engaged completely, listening well, showing respect and demonstrating a clear understanding of what was being asked of them. The Young Leaders were awarding stickers to recognise Teamwork, Determination, Passion, Respect and Self Belief. I am so proud of the team for earning every single sticker, multiple times!

After a well deserved and much appreciated lunch break, we then headed into the tournament and wow, what a set of matches!

Our first opponents were St. John’s Primary, and what a match to break the ice! We held possession and dominated the game with Lillie scoring the opening goal! Great passing and linking up down the court secured second and third goals for Sienna and Lexi!

Southill 3 – 0 St John’s

The second match was against St. Augustines which caused us to up our play with Ellie-Belle and Florence proving themselves formidable lines of defence, keeping the score clear in the first half. Another blinder from Lillie saw us win the second half and the match.

Southill 1 – 0 St Augustine’s

Our third match was against Bincombe Valley, a strong team who, despite our excellent marking and keeping  pressure on their passes, scored the opening goal in the first half.  The second half saw amazing play from Lola and Samuel, linking with Ellie-Belle who scored our only goal of this match.

Southill 1 – 2 Bincombe Valley

Our final match in the group stage saw us facing St George’s. There were some extremely tall opposition who stood heads and shoulders above our players, yet Southill’s resilience shone through again with everyone playing at thier absolute best. Our scorers had rotated with Jess and Lexi linking the game in center positions exceptionally well.  Lillie, Lola, Florence and Ellie-belle supporting with their excellent link-ups and intercepting, providing our shooters Samuel and Sienna the opportunity to score a phenomenal 2 goals each in the first half! Definitely the game of the tournament!

Southill 4 – 1 St George’s

We are so proud to say we won our group stage and got through to the semi-finals to face Dorchester Middle School, a team we had already played in the skills and drills in the morning and we thought would be fair opponents. As with us however, Dorchester Middle had found their feet during the day. The whole level of play was much more intense from both sides with a lot of contact and free passes being awarded, showing the sheer effort on each teams behalf. Despite the further amazing play from Southill, with everyone applying all the very best of their skills, the semi-final ended:

Southill 0 – 4 DMS

I have been blown away by the way the team played today. They are already skilled and talented players but today, their teamwork and play took them to a whole new level.

Within each match, it is expected that players rotate into different positions to keep the level of play and ability fair for all. This is not an easy task as obviously we all have strengths in different areas of the court and we all have our preferred postitions. Everyone took the rotations in their stride today and had a chance to play not only their favourite and most comfortable positions, but also the ones they are not so keen on.

I am also proud of their determination and resilience. Despite some disappointing calls and outcomes in some of the matches, at no point did anyone moan or complain. Everyone kept their heads held high and kept their resilience up at all times. Many thanks as well to our work experience student who was another excellent partipant in the skills and drills and was also a fabulous help throughout the day.

A day to truly be proud of Southill Netball Team and a memory for everyone to take away, a day full of phenomenal scores taking us to the semi-finals with only a large team of very tall middle school players halting our progress further!

Have a look below and see for yourselves the dedication and determination in our play, well done team Southill!