On the 7th March, Ella, Ria, Honor, Imogen, Mia, Henrietta, Ellen, Melina, Naina, and Mrs Maggs-Wellings attended the ISA netball championships. As well as competing, Ella and Ria have written about their experiences from the day:
The Lyonsdown girls were up against 14 other teams. The schools were split up into 2 different pools, we were in pool 1. As Mrs Hazell couldn’t come with us on the trip we needed another coach, so very kindly Fran, the National Spots Assistant for the Independent Schools Association, ISA, offered to be our coach.
Everyone was feeling very nervous but excited at the same time. The foghorn suddenly blew and all the matches had begun! First Lyonsdown played against Park, sadly we lost 3,2 to them. Next we played a match against Oakwood, we drew with them (we were getting better). In the third match, whilst Natalie was trying to shoot, a girl pushed the ball out of her hands! This meant that Natalie was unable to play anymore because she had pulled two ligaments in her middle finger. Luckily heroine Ria managed to step in for her. We now only had three more matches left to play, Lyonsdown were very lucky and WON the rest of the matches in their pool! Hooray!
The lunch break had now come and everyone was starving after all that playing. It was also the time where we found out that we got through to the semi-finals. Everyone was overjoyed! Overall Lyonsdown came second in the first round. When we had all finished lunch it was time to play in the semi-finals.
Our first match in the semi-finals was against Howe Green House (one of the best netball teams there). In this match we were playing for first and second place in the nationals, but unfortunately we lost. We had the chance to play one more match against Park, this time we had high hopes but we lost on a sudden death goal shoot out. Although we didn’t have a place in the nationals we did come fourth out of fourteen teams and it was the first time that we had entered this competition.
Everyone felt really happy and Mrs Hazell was really proud of us.