Junior volleyballers win silver at NISS champs
Katikati College sent the junior A girls’ team to the North Island Secondary Schools Volleyball Championships for the first time in several years.
The promising group of girls have all been playing for a couple of seasons now and are a great combination of athletic ability and coachability, coming together to form a pretty slick unit.
Coached by Ashley Shanley with the support of teacher Simon Quin, they first competed in the BOP qualifiers against the Baywide schools to determine their ranking for tournament. They played exceedingly well for their first attempt, coming eighth in the strong Bay competition. This enabled them to go to tournament competing in the top division of 32 teams. The team was drawn in a pool with Mount Mauganaui College (MMC) A, Matamata A and Spotswood College A. In there first match they went down 0-2 to Matamata before beating Spotswood 2-0. The team then conceded their final pool match 0-2 to the very strong MMC team. This left them third in their pool and going through to the 17-32 pool draw.
This was where the girls played some of their best volleyball. The first match was against Bethlehem College A and in a ferocious game beat them 2-1, coming back from a close first set loss to smash the second 26-7 and win the third 15-5. They then played and lost to Rangitoto 1-2 in an exceedingly close match, before beating Te Awamutu 2-0. On countback they were placed top of their pool.
In the play-offs they beat MMC B 2-1 to make the semi-final against Tarawera High School. This was a highly exciting match that they narrowly won 25-33, 25-19 to make the final of Division 2 — all of the girls playing fantastic volleyball. What an outstanding first effort for this inexperienced team. The final was played on the livestream court against Arore College. The first set was a very nervous start and they lost it 6-25 but gathered confidence to almost take the second set 21-25, so though Arore were worthy winners, it was a silver medal in Division 2 for the Katikati College junior A team.
Special mention goes to Lucy Turner who not only was one of the best players on court but received the tournament award for Most Promising Junior Umpire.