Thank you from the netballers

Kia ora, here’s a letter from Carla Gordon, netball coach, with an update on how the girls did during tournament week:

To the members of PAG
On behalf of the WSC/NPOW Premier Netball team, we wish to thank you for supporting us this year
at the Upper North Island Secondary Schools Netball Tournament (UNISS). We played 2 games a
day for 5 days at Harbourside Netball Centre in Mt Maunganui. The weather came to the party mostly
and only once did we have to play in the rain so that was a bonus.  We set a goal this year to make A grade.
We worked hard towards this goal, having to play some big name teams within our grade.

In our first round of pool play, we won 2 out of 3 games. We lost our first game Tuesday morning
against the current West Auckland Secondary Schools champs, Avondale, by 10. That was the
smallest losing margin – they had beaten the other teams in our pool by 20/30+.

We progressed to the top 16 of B grade (each grade holds 32 teams – there are 4 grades in total) in
second place. We set the next goal of making top 8. Again, we were successful in this and by the end
of play Wednesday, WSC/NPOW was in the top 8 of B grade.

We then set our next goal to make to the top 4, thereby automatically promoting to A grade in 2019.
This, however wasn’t to be. We played hard, but even though it was an extremely tight race between
the teams, we missed the top 4 by 1 point.

We played a hard game against the powerhouse netball school Mt Maunganui – who had home turf
advantage. The girls picked up the win, however we afforded Mt Maunganui a bonus point, which
pushed them through ahead of us by the 1 point.

It was a hard pill to swallow but the girls picked themselves up, turned up on Friday and played some
great netball. We were able to give our UNISS newbies some much deserved court time and our
solid 7 got to sit on the bench and cheer on the girls who will hopefully carry the torch for them.

Because PAG supported us, we were able to take away a team that enabled our school to be
dominant and a force to be reckoned with at a national tournament. As the coach, it was an
enormous relief not to be stressing until the last second as to whether my players would be able to come.

The covering of the cost of the umpire and entry fee by PAG, combined with our grant from
North and South Trust and the players’ fundraising – brought the cost to below $150 for their families.

Again, we thank you for your support and hope that you are as pleased with the results as we are.

Nga mihi
Carla Gordon
Premier Coach – WSC/NPOW