COLLEGE SPORT
The volleyball season has begun with four teams entered in the Tauranga leagues — senior girls, senior boys, junior girls A and junior girls B.
It shows the growth in the sport at Katikati.
The season began with the senior teams winning the Thames Valley Secondary Schools’ senior tournament in term 3, before starting the Tauranga leagues.
The junior girls A team are entered into Junior Tournament week and will be attending the North Island Secondary Schools Junior Volleyball tournament in Auckland from November 26.
They had to play in the BOP qualifying tournament over six days and performed exceptionally well, coming up against strong teams from Trident and Tauranga Girl’s College. They came eighth out of 28 teams with five wins and three losses. Coached by Simon Quin and Ashley Shanley the players will be looking to take their form into tournament week.
The team also came out on top at the annual TVSS junior tournament held at KKC last Thursday. Winning all their games they looked very strong, with KKC junior B coming third. A junior boys team was entered consisting of basketballers and rugby players and they had a fun day playing a new sport and made the final, to go down by one point to Mercury Bay Area School.
Katikati College is also running a “stay and play” volleyball competition for Year 7 and 8s with 30 young volleyballers playing four a side on Wednesday night. This led to three teams competing in the Bay of Plenty Volleyball tournament at the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre in Tauranga, which was won by the boy’s team on the day 52-42 over Bethlehem College (BC) boys, with the 7/8 A girls team coming third, winning 50-43 over BC Girls and the 7/8 Girls B team fourth, in Division 2.
The two top teams went on to play in the BOP Spikers Invitational Tournament at ASB Arena which was a fantastic two days of volleyball, playing teams from the Bay as well as Nelson Bays and Hawkes Bay representative sides. Both teams played exceptionally well with the girls team finishing sixth overall, though the boys team could only play one day.
TVSS 3X3 BASKETBALL
KKC sent two teams to the Thames Valley 3x3 Basketball held in Te Aroha on November 13. Team A — Dandre Du Plessis, Tomasi Vakasiuola, Jay Gordon, Jess Harray and Sara Campbell — had an excellent tournament, winning all their pool matches before coming up against Te Aroha A in an exciting final. Te Aroha boasted two national level players and had cruised into the final with big scores, but found Katikati a much tougher proposition. Du Plessis had an outstanding day hitting two pointers frequently and Vakasiuola’s defence was amazing. They leaked seven or eight points in the first quarter but fought back with tenacity, finally succumbing 15-13 in a thrilling match.
The B team — Nikolai Frandi, Jonny Sukkel, Josh Noble, Angel Apaapa and Lily Stollery — also played fantastic basketball with Frandi’s representative skills on show.
They finished second equal in their pool and were unlucky not to go through to top eight, missing out by one point in countback. They their crossover match for 9th/10th easily.