Netball and Touch Football Gala Day

On a very hot day in Tamworth St Mary's sent 4 netball teams and 5 touch football teams to compete against teams from all over the diocese. Students from all schools involved were very excited to finally be competing in some inter-school sport.

Our netball teams were very successful with one of the senior girls teams and the mixed team both coming away with trophies. In touch football our teams were competitive with a couple of teams unlucky to miss out on trophies.

As always a massive thank you to our parent helpers (Sharon Stuart, Nicole Hill, Paul Schmude and Dean Carson) that enable these days to go ahead.

I hope you enjoy reading the reviews of the day's play below written by Madeleine Cowley (Netball) and touch football ( James Lawry)

Netball Review

By the time we arrived at the netball courts, it was past 9 o’clock. I was happy with my team, the opals. It had lots of really good players on it, like Eve, Aleesha and Lizzy. I myself had never played netball before and was a little nervous about it. This would be my first time playing a real game, and it was at a gala day!

Our tent was set up in the shade, away from all the other tents. It wasn’t long until the first game, so we did our warm-ups straight away. The games were only twenty minutes and we only changed subs every ten minutes. I was off first in our first game, but in the second half I was on the court, playing GK. I wasn’t very good at that position, since I’m not particularly tall. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my first game and I think I went just fine for my first-ever-game, and we smashed the other team by like, seven goals.

We had our second game off, so me and the rest of my team didn’t really do much at first. About a third of the way through our break, though, our coach (Sharon) announced the positions for the next game. I was GS, opposite from what I had been previously. I was really nervous about that, as I wasn’t exactly a great shot, but my teammates who had played before helped me practice. And it turned out, when the next game came, despite not scoring, I felt very happy about how I’d done, and bonus points, our team won!

After that, we had three more games. We won them all. I was positioned all over the court: WA, GS, GA, WD. I was everywhere! I had a thing or two to eat about every second game, because netball is tiring -- and hunger inducing. I was eating my sandwich, when I heard the loud speakers call out something like, “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE OPALS AND THE OTHER TEAM, WHO WILL BE PLAYING IN THE OPENS SEMI-FINAL ON COURT 9.”(I forgot the name of our opponents).

Our team was really excited for this, but slightly worried because the team we were versing had representative players on it. We were fine. That team was frankly, not that good compared to us. Beating them and moving on to the finals was a walk in the park.

The final however, was a different story. I was WA, I think, and I didn’t really know what to do. We were versing St Edward’s from Tamworth, and gosh, they were GOOD. GREAT even. In the first half, they were smashing us. We did make a comeback in the second half luckily, when I was off. Yet it wasn’t enough to beat them. The Opals were all very disappointed. But we cheered up after we were all presented with silver medals, and were put onto a lovely air conditioned bus that was taking us back home.

- Madeleine Cowley

Touch Football Review

“Line up, line up!”, Mr G yells out to everybody. Jumping with joy everybody lines up for the upcoming hot gala day! Mitch, Darcy and I ran as fast as we could to the back of the bus to get the best seat in the bus. When we got to Tamworth we had to drop off another St Mary's team to a field and we stayed on the bus to get to another field. As we got to the field we got the tent out of the bus because it was going to be a very hot day. My team's coach was Mr Lester and there was another team with us coached by Paul Schmude. The other team was playing first so I asked if we could go watch them but we were not allowed to because of COVID. We could not go wandering around watching other teams like in past years.

My team had 6 games and in the first game I scored 5 tries and the final score was 7-0. In the second game I injured myself but I stilled played and scored 4 tries and the final score was 8-1. In the 3rd game I scored 3 tries and came off for the second half and they scored 2 in the second half but we still won 5-2. For the 4th game my knee was getting really sore and I could barely run but I still scored 1 try in the 4th and 5th games but for the 6th game my knee was really bad so I did not play until the second half for 5 min and I scored but we still lost 1-4. On the way back on the bus we had to pick up the other team and we talked on the bus about how my friend vomited and how Mitch's team went. He said his team lost every game but drew one of them.

By James Lawry

Diocesan Tennis Trials

Good luck to Mackenzie Naden who is heading to Tamworth on Friday to compete at the Diocesan Tennis Trials. This event is for students who are in Yr 5 and are experience tennis players. If Mackenzie is successful she will then progress to Polding Trials early next year.

We look forward to hearing how you go Mackenzie.

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