An Unexpected Tournament

Thursday 8th October bore a brand new initiative amongst two Hillcrest teams – the Back to Netball ladies challenged the U16s to an unexpected tournament, as both groups had 15 players each!

Both Julie Mayo (U16s coach) and Clare Nicholls (B2N coach) led strong team talks with their players, both willing each side to explore different tactics , and work together as a 7-strong unit.

It was the first time the Back to Netball ladies had worked together in a while, so simply knowing how each other play and adapting to different players were the main goals (aside from shooting them in…!). The U16s had a match at the weekend (see Julie’s match report), so it was a chance for Julie to see how they all worked together, especially as we have some new, very talented U14s who have just joined the Seniors.

The U16s played wonderfully, were incredibly drilled and disciplined, and made the B2N ladies witness some great netball, hopefully taking it all on board for future games. Despite losing all their games, the B2N ladies gave as good as they got, shooting was on point, and they all noticed a big improvement in their game since they’d started. Some ladies have only been playing for less than a year!

A good chance to get match play, to play against a variety of opponents and a more interesting runabout than the treadmill, we’re going to try and make it a regular occurrence once a month – any B2Ns/U16s who would like to play, listen out at training for the next Thursday session.