By Leisen Jobe and Linda Clouston
Assistant Coach and Manager
The first three days of the school holidays saw our 1stX1 Hockey team take part in the ANZAC Festival of Hockey, hosted at St Cuthbert’s College.
This is a prestigious, invitation-only festival that featured 10 of the top hockey schools in the country. Whilst it was not a tournament as such or a round robin format, Westlake had 5 matches in 3 days against some old foes and a couple of new ones. The benefits for us were that we will likely meet up with theses teams during our Auckland season and at Nationals later in the year and a great challenge for pre- season skill level.
The results were outstanding. We won four of the five matches and drawing the fifth. This is by far the best results from all the previous ANZAC Festivals that we have been invited to. The team scored 13 goals, 3 goals against, beating Dio 4 v 0, Rangiruru 3 v 2, Napier Girls 2 nil, Hamilton Girls 3 nil and a draw with Wellington College, 1 all.
The team fielded 5 new players (including a new goalkeeper). Co-captains Paige Blake and Georgie Shotter were nominated for the Festival Team, who played in a match against “Old Girls” festival team, with several current or retired Black sticks. They did really well and certainly showed their great skills. Our team MVP for the festival was Brianna Speck, who played a consistently high level of hockey throughout.
On Tuesday evening teams were hosted at St Cuthbert’s for a formal dinner. This included a guest speaker, White Fern Suzie Bates (recovering from shoulder surgery). A big thank you also to Will Lacey who is the team coach and lead the girls to these great results. We are all looking forward to a great season.
NB: The school would like to thank Linda Clouston our WGHS TIC, Will Lacey our Coach, Leisen Jobe our Specialist Coach, and Carol James who helped out with umpiring who all gave up their time to attend this tournament.