The only two teams to come through with unblemished records, Hamilton Girls’ High School and Christchurch’s St Margaret’s College will contest tomorrow’s (Friday) final of the FUJIFILM Business Innovation NZ Secondary Schools Netball Champs in Porirua.
With Hamilton Girls’ securing their spot earlier in the day, it came down to the final cross-over match to decide the second finalist when unbeaten pair St Margaret’s and the well-performed Avondale College clashed for the honour.
Getting off to a cracking start, the South Island side, co-coached by former Silver Fern Julie Seymour, faced a barrage of raids for the remainder of the match from the young Avondale side before pocketing a tight 41-37 win.
Both finalists backed up their pre-tournament status after Hamilton Girls’ came into the event as the top qualifiers from the Upper North Island Secondary Schools tournament and St Margaret’s the top qualifiers from the equivalent South Island tournament.
Hamilton Girls have never been in the final while St Margaret’s were the losing finalists in 2014.
``It’s a pretty cool feeling and I’m super, super proud after such a tough game,’’ Seymour said of clinching the key match.
``We hadn’t seen much of the North Island teams to get a gauge on ourselves, it’s really been just one step at a time.’’
Seymour felt that coming up against so many different styles during the week would stand St Margaret’s in good stead heading into the final.
``What I’ve really enjoyed about this week and our team is that different teams have thrown different things at us. The girls have just adapted and grown and that’s a really important part of being a young athlete, and I’m really proud of how the team’s been able to do that so far,’’ she said.
St Kentigern College lost their last shot to stay in title contention when Hamilton Girls’ grabbed a tight 33-31 win, thanks to some clutch shooting from Keilani Hadfield and Arikinoa Shortland.
``I’m really thrilled,’’ Hamilton Girls’ coach Kim Howard said. ``I’ve been at Hamilton Girls since 2020 and we haven’t had an opportunity to come to the Upper North Island Secondary Schools tournament, because of Covid, for the past two years, so this has all been a work in progress.
``We’ve trained to play tournament netball, so we knew we needed to be fit and worked really hard on our conditioning to make sure that we can be playing on day five as well as we were on day one.
``It hasn’t all been perfect but we’re unbeaten and we’re in the final, so you can’t ask for any more than that. This is the best result for our school ever. We’ve achieved some pretty big things this year (top qualifiers) and this is the icing on the cake.’’
Losing two players to injury over the past two days impacted the progress of Howick College, whose title hopes evaporated when they were well beaten 37-23 by Hamilton Girls in the morning round.
St Margaret’s College safely negotiated their morning match-up with a solid 39-31 win over a well-drilled St Peter’s School to stay unbeaten while Avondale College also kept their perfect record intact following a decisive 49-25 win over Trident High School.
St Kentigern kept their hopes alive when pushed all the way by a determined Columba College before squeezing a tight 31-25 win in the closing minutes.