Unlike every other major competitive school sport, the national winner in netball is decided on short tournament games. A full netball game takes 60 minutes to complete, yet at the national schools tournament the team had only 14 minutes against each school. One wrong decision by an umpire, one small mistake by us, could cost us the game.

Out of 172 schools that entered the competition from all over the country, Wakefield Girls’ placed 15th. It wasn’t as high as we had hoped, but it is a position to be extremely proud of.

A memorable game was where we took the overall runners up, Bromsgrove  School, to the wire and narrowly lost to them in a fiercely fought match against a team with U17 England players in it.  The team showed that they absolutely deserved to be ranked up with the very best in the country.

We are very proud of the team for how hard they worked to get to the finals, and how they played and represented themselves and the school on the day.   They are an outstanding netball team and also a really fantastic group of young ladies. You supported each other, you lift each other up and you back each other no matter what.  Above all else, for that, you should be very proud of yourselves.