Sport

Sports Report Term 4, Week 5

Another sport filled week for Heidelberg PS. We hosted the Boys Banyule Division Hot Shots Tennis finals on Wednesday, the State Track & Field Championships were on Thursday as well as the Girls Division Cricket Blast, and to end the week we had the Girls Northern Metro Region Hot Shots Tennis Finals on Friday. 

Boys Division Tennis

The Boys Division Tennis Finals was originally scheduled for 2 weeks ago but with the bad weather and then our opponents on camp the boys had to wait to qualify for the Region Finals and join the girls team. 

When the students seeded 1-4 started, the home advantage against Alphington Grammar was working out for us. All the boys were ahead early into the match, and I was quietly confident. However, Alphington players stepped up and started to put pressure on our boys. The scores after 4 matches were 2-2. Players 5-8 started, and scores were level. It then started to see saw and Alphington got ahead in all the matches. Going into the doubles the scores were 2-6 and the boys needed to win all the doubles convincingly to scrape through to Region. I couldn’t be prouder of the boys, they came out firing and they won 3/4 doubles and the match lost was only by a point. Although they didn’t make the Region Finals they should all be extremely happy with how well they played this year. The singles matches lost were very close and to only lose by 2 sets is nothing considering 4 of the singles matches could have gone either way. Well Done Boys!!! 

State Athletics

On Thursday Henry F competed in High Jump at the SSV State Track & Field Championships at Lakeside Stadium. Henry has been participating in Athletics for a couple of years now and as a grade 3 would have probably competed for the school last year. However, in the final Little Aths competition in March last year he broke his arm doing High Jump. 

This year he started where he left off and kept delivering at every stage. He set a new PB of 1.32m at Division by jumping every height on his first attempt. Henry had been training 2-3 times a week before school during term 3 and term 4 and all the practice paid off. Henry jumped 1.29m at State, finishing 9th out of 16. Well Done Henry!

Girls Division Cricket Blast

Some of the girls had been looking forward to this since last year after getting to play in the grade 6 cricket team as grade 5s. They were unlucky last year not to make the district final and if they had, they probably would have made Division last year. The girls this year dominated the District comp but after some research from some of the girls, they found out their Division opponents also had grade 5s playing last year and their 2024 team came 2nd at State. 

Conditions were tough, with a strong wind making both bowling and batting difficult at times. The opponents, St Anthonys were a strong team as expected and well drilled. Our girls decided to bowl first. Few no balls were bowled which is costly as 2 runs are gifted to the opponents and then get to hit off the tee. The girls did manage to grab 3 wickets, one of those being a fantastic catch on the run. The girls had 83 to chase down and try to not lose wickets as the fielders get 5 runs added to their batting score. 

When it was time for St Anthonys to bowl, their first 2 bowlers bowled fast and one of them pretty much bowled yorkers every bowl. Our opening batters didn’t go out all year and tended to be the big scorers however they were kept to singles and dot balls and also lost a wicket. After the opening batters faced their 12 balls the scores kept increasing but the run rate wasn’t as high as it needed to be the girls also lost another 4 wickets. The score finished 108-70. A great effort considering they played against players who made it to State last year and was beating teams with much bigger run differences. Well Done Girls for a brilliant year of cricket. 

Girls N.M. Region Tennis 

The girl’s tennis team headed out to Westmeadows Tennis Club on Friday to play in the Northern Metro Region Hot Shots Tennis Finals. The girls were placed in pool 2 against Preston PS and Plenty Parklands PS. The girls had a bye first so got to watch the competition. They played the losers of the first round which was Preston PS. 

The girls started well against Preston and won the first 4 singles matches however there was a misunderstanding with how the rankings worked from Preston PS. Ours girls seeded 5-8 played Preston players who should have been playing higher. The singles finished 5-3 our way which meant the girls only needed to win 2 doubles matches. The girls did just that and the score finished 7-5. 

The next game was pretty much the semi-final, and the winner plays in the State Qualifying game against the winner from the other pool. The girls knew it was going to be tough after watching Plenty Parklands beat Preston. They were tough opponents, however 3 of the 8 singles matches lost were by 2 or 1 point. Singles finish 6-2 their way and the girls needed to win all their doubles to maybe win on countback. Unfortunately, the girls couldn’t beat the doubles opponents. The score finished 10-2. Plenty Parklands ended up being the Region Champions and although we lost 10-2 our individual sets were closer than other teams they played. 

Having won 1 and lost 1, the girls played in the 3rd place play off game against Greenvale PS. Players seeded 1-4 once again came out on top setting a good foundation for the rest of the team. The next 4 singles matches were very even. The girls played well in the humidity winning 2 more singles matches meaning they only needed 1 win in doubles to secure 3rd place. The girls did just that. 3 of the four girls doubles matches were won our lost by a point and fortunately 1 of those was in our favour. The girls won 7-5. 

Congratulations to the girls for a fantastic year. They are the only sports team this year to make it as far as Region. Well Done on finishing 3rd and showing awesome team spirit all day.