Netball

The year started with two netball pre-season early morning training sessions running in the Michaelmas term. These sessions were successful in building fitness and general attacking and defending skills. There were two Forder clubs for shooting development, both of which were successful with an overall improvement of 20.9% increase from students after developing their shooting technique. Massive congratulations to the Year 7 group who showed the most progress across the board.

During the October exeat 48 students from Year 8 departed the College for the Netball and Rugby Sports Tour to Bath. The students experienced lots of highquality training sessions and fixtures. In training the tour focused on preliminary movements in attack, defensive tactics, ball handling and decision making. The netballers also had a fantastic training session led by Hannah Passmore and Lily Jones from Team Bath Netball at the Sports Training Village at Bath University. Many thanks to Haysfield Girls School for hosting our students for their fixtures. We saw some exceptional games played against two very experienced squads where our players adapted to the challenge in front of them, applying what was learnt in training which led to incredibly positive outcomes of these fixtures. Our staff facilitated some focus group style conversations on Sports Psychology and Nutrition to supplement our athletic experience. Of course, we still had to squeeze in some fun, starting the tour watching Bath v Saracens at the Rec in the City Centre, the Roman Baths, an extremely competitive evening at the bowling alley and a big trip to Pizza Express! Huge thanks to Mr Loveridge, Mr Hart and Miss Collard for helping me make the trip an invaluable experience for our students. During the Lent term sessions were open to all students according to the College’s gender-neutral sports programme. Students were set and moved across groups based on their netball experience, knowledge, and development. This led to a core group of netballers who were committed to the programme attending training and fixtures on a weekly basis and which will continue to build as they journey through the College. I would also like to congratulate all the students who had little to no experience of the sport who fully embraced it with over 100 fixtures being played across the term. St Dunstan’s College entered the annual Kent Schools Netball Tournament, and the students were able to yield some good results with our U19-U12 teams all competing. A special mention to the U12, U13 and U16 squads who delivered some promising performances, which we are hoping to build on next time they

compete at the tournament. Our annual House Netball event showed fantastic competition and some flare in our performances on court. The combined winners across Year 7 to 10 were Forder! The St Dunstan’s Festival saw the Staff v Student netball match occur which the staff won, but the students showed their skill and athleticism bringing it back in the final quarter of the game. Congratulations to Miss Hughes and Dan Whitham who were respectively voted as Player of the Match. Lastly, to close out the year of netball at the College we had the Netball/Rugby 7s tournament down at the Jubilee Grounds. With over 60 students competing in both events prizes and bragging rights were up for grabs. Overall, standout performances could fill a whole page, but these pupils consistently impressed our courts, supported their peers, and demonstrated admiral personal qualities: Year 12/13: Faye Baptiste, Desiree Oghomi, Abbie Bottle and Amelie May Year 11: Molly Willson, Emily Kay, Sophia McGarr and Aley Owoh Year 10: Betsy Davies, Nerys EmlynJones, Sasha Swann and Izzy Calogeras Year 9: Milla Dao, Myriam Olson, Lucia Hedges and Sascha Rowett Year 8: Jasmine Morrison, Aidan McHenry, Isabel Reynolds and Esmae Howard Year 7: Megan Chalmers, Isobella David, Alyssa Jouy and Harry Hutchinson I hope that our students have been able to develop a great love, understanding and appreciation of the game alongside the skills they need to develop as a netballer. It has been an honour to be the Head of Netball here at St Dunstan’s and I hope that our students will continue to be actively involved in what netball has to offer inside and outside the College.

Miss R McKay-Pryce

Coordinator of Netball