South Otago High School
Our girls's football team travelled to Timaru for tournament week.
A quick glance at our pool showed the team was in a tough week with them being expected to play the South Canterbury, Central Otago and Otago champions for 2023 in the first two days. The team did very well to hold both Timaru Girls High School and Wakatipu High School to three goals in the first halves of Monday's games but both games blew out a bit in terms of the scores after halftime as senior players were rested for the end of the week. A similar pattern followed with players being rested against Queens the next day seeing us finishing pool play with three losses out of three games.
Wednesday saw us meeting Ashburton College in our first knockout game.. In a tight and close game both teams created and stopped chances to score and the game looked headed for penalties. An interesting decision regarding timing saw Ashburton grab a winner in the 3rd minute of overtime. The feeling of disappointment was clear as the girls came off the field but a rousing speech from one of the players about how proud she felt soon turned things around. Unfortunately we could not repeat the performance on the field in the second game of the day and went down to St Kevins and faced the dreaded last place play off the next day..
Our last game was against Fiordland College. They took the lead early but our team did not give up and showed how much they have learnt and developed this year. Two crucial contributions by Poppy Dobson, one of our youngest players, set up goals from Molly Paterson and Jessie O'Hara seeing us take a lead into half time. Fiordland fought back and equalised but Molly, once more, found the back of the net to give us a tight 3-2 lead. There was time for more drama as Firodland College went close to equalising but the post and then a fantastic save from Ashlee Anderson prevented that and left us as the winners on the day, That moment capped off a great week for Ashlee as she went on to take our team's MVP for the week. Mention must also go to Jessie who had the same number of game MVP's as Ashlee but she was a part of the final choice in recognising Ashlee deserved it more.
The winning for our team was not over though. At prize-giving we were awarded the fair play trophy by the referees. Our team had scored a whopping 29 out of 30 points across the week showing that losing did not affect the positive way in which this team shows off our school values. In fact there was a lot of interest in how we lost a point and what we can do next year to now do that.
A big thank you to Tracey Murray and Julie Lumb for coming away for the week with us. The players and I both appreciate the contribution that you made to the week.
A bigger thank you and goodbye to Charlotte Benington, Mariska Capper and Bridee Lumb who played their last game for the school in the match against Fiordland. It was great we can farewell you with a win. I also want to include Bree Uren in this goodbye and thanks who also leaves the team but did not come to the tournament.
