Girls’ Team at Futsal National Secondary Schools’ Tournament
The dream team was looking good for nationals. The core of the
team consisted of the senior girls A futsal Cheyenne Welsh, myself
(Lulu Jordan ) Abbie Vose, Zoe Lee, Ashley Arquette, Lauren Hartridge, Sophie Pyott, and a selection of the talented younger girls
Monique Thompson, Ashlin Mcintyre, Maggie Brunton and Kayla
Redman. Despite the minor issue that we’d never had a practice
with the full team there, and that we had no actual coach, we were
amping for nationals. We had the mindset. The determination
was there in all of us, go hard or go home. March 27 was our first
game. After a very thorough warm up we faced off against Marian
College. A shaky start turned into a solid 2nd half ending in a 4:1
victory to us. We had a long lunch break before the next match
against the team to beat, Mt. Albert Grammar, trained in an academy by ex-New Zealand coach. These girls were well drilled, fit and
great on the ball. The first half was a close one. We defended well,
closing down many of their opportunities, but like the bunch of
ruthless perpetrators they were, as soon as we made a mistake
it was two on the goalie (me) and I couldn’t quite reach those far
corners, or slam their attackers in time. Still we managed to darken their score sheet by slotting in 4 against them, thanks to some
majestic skills on Ashley’s behalf and a good set of corners taken
by Cheyenne. The final score was 8:4 to them. We were rather put
down. However we knew that the road to the finals wasn’t over yet.
We had to really fight if we wanted to make it now. Our third game
was at 7.30pm against Wellington East Girls College which we won
narrowly 2 – 1. The game against St Andrews College was by far,
the most vicious fight we had. I’m not going to lie and say it was
fair play. They had it out for us. Their boys were loud, lewd and
distracting, but worst of all they whipped their girls into a nasty pack
of bloodthirsty beasts. There was a prolonged time during the
middle of the game where Paula made an executive decision not
to put the juniors on for fear of physical harm coming to them. At
one point there were six girls who hit the ground in a series. After
that the ref caught on and warned us all that the next foul was a
card. We had a 4 nil lead but they were targeting us to hurt us,
not to play futsal. Needless to say when the full time whistle went
we were thrilled to have put that behind us, hobbling off the pitch
with heavy legs but light hearts. We had qualified to play in the
semi-finals. We did not know how good the other team would be,
but we knew we couldn’t afford not to leave everything out there.
So we didn’t. A solid performance running mostly on adrenaline
gave us a 2:1 victory and put us through to the finals. The finals
were, needless to say, against Mt. Albert Grammar and we were
the underdogs. We played a defensive game first half but it wasn’t
enough to stop them penetrating our ‘D’ and taking well aimed
shots past me. I ran out to stop the one-twos and the shots at goal,
with limited success. It was crushing to be beaten so many times.
Every time I hit the ground to get that ball it was just out of reach, the
whistle would blow and my heart sunk a little closer to my socks. It
was a tough game. We really wanted it but it just wasn’t our year.
Afterwards their coach and the ref told us that, it was the best
contested game he’d watched any team play against them. That
we had done great and that out of the 5 goals scored against
them, 4 of them were from us. We left Wellington with silver medals
and a desire to do better next year, but sadly those will be games I
won’t see.
Lulu Jordan
Futsal Girls Junior A
Back Row: Laura Somerville, Jenna Tidswell, Aishlin McIntyre
Front Row: Olivia Wolland, Maggie Brunton, Tatum Fletcher
Absent:
Eden O’Leary
Futsal Girls Senior A
Back Row: Zoe Lee, Abbie Vose, Sophie Pyott, Lauren Hartridge
Front Row: Ashley Arquette, Lulu Jordan, (Co-Captain), Cheyenne Welsh,
(Co-Captain)
Futsal Wellington Team
Back Row: Lauren Hartridge, Lulu Jordan, (Co-Captain), Maggie Brunton
2nd Row: Kayla Redman, Abbie Vose, Sophie Pyott, Paula Edilson (Manager)
Front Row: Aishlin McIntyre, Zoe Lee, Cheyenne Welsh, (Co-Captain), Ashley
Arquette, Monique Thomson