The ParaNetball Championships opened to clubs in 2020, and under our previous guise as Special Olympics East Herts we entered a team that year. Sadly the 2021 tournament was unable to be held due to the lockdown, so this was only the second year that the tournament ran for clubs. Excitement among our athletes was high from the moment we breathed the word “tournament” at a training session in December!
Seven teams were originally booked to attend, but Buzzers had to pull out a week before the event, and positive covid tests also forced a last minute withdrawal by Special Olympics St Albans, leaving five teams to battle it out at the Lee Westwood Sports Centre. The schedule had been quickly amended, and we now had time for a lunch break and an early finish, while still having four games to play.
We were glad the tournament was indoors as it was a very windy day outside! The players on our team who had arrived early were able to get on the court and start doing a bit of passing and shooting practice before the first game began at 10:00.
We took to the court at 10:20 for our first game, up against Net4All White. Net4All are part of Sheffield Concord Netball Club, and had two teams entered into the tournament. N4A White were the higher ability team of the two, and from the beginning it was a struggle for our team – our defending end were working hard from the first whistle as N4A White had the first centre pass. Our GD, who had only got the hang of rebounding the previous week, was working quite hard in this game. Unfortunately despite actually winning a fair amount of ball in the defensive circle, we struggled to bring it down through court. At half time the score was 0-3. We moved our WD out to WA for the second half but this didn’t quite gel and the final score was 0-8.
Despite feeling a little frustrated we had a little chat and looked at what we’d done really well in the last game, and came back on court at 11:00 for our second match in good spirits. This match was against Friars Academy, who had come from Wellingborough. They were a very friendly team and several of them had been chatting with our GA before we went down for the match. The first half was a washout with the score at 0-9. We made one switch, swapping our WA and C. While it didn’t give us much more drive in attack, we did very good defensive work in this half – we prevented Friars Academy from scoring at all and the final score remained 0-9. Our WA was very good at driving into space in this half, remembering to try to get away from the defenders.
We had another short break before our next match, which was at 11:40 against Net4All Red. This team was closer to our level, with both teams having similar capabilities. We were able to get the ball deeper into our attack end this time, and our GS scored three goals in the first half, giving a half time score of 3-0 to us. We kept the team unchanged, but struggled a bit in the second half as the N4A Red GK was very effective, able to get several intercepts. However, we did have a penalty awarded which was taken by our GA, who scored her first goal of the day after a couple of earlier misses. There was a strong defensive effort from our GD and WD who made it very difficult for N4A Reds to get the ball into their attacking end. The final score was 4-0 to us.
We had an extended lunch break now, and the match after lunch we knew would be a very difficult one as it was against a team who had won the tournament previously. However, everyone was riding on a wave of excitement after the earlier win and came out to play with enthusiasm. EPCN Dynamos come from the Ellesmere Port area and are part of Special Olympics. They had the first centre pass and once again from the first whistle we were having to work really hard on defence. The halves were fairly even, with the half time score being 0-10 and the final score 0-19. Despite it being really difficult the whole team kept their Watching other chins up and didn’t stop playing as hard as they could.
This wrapped up the tournament for us, and after watching the last match all the teams went
on court and sat down for the presentation. Our hard work was rewarded by a fourth place finish, with all the players being given a special netball themed water bottle to take home, as well as the new ball that had been given to the team at the beginning of the day.
We learnt a lot about what things we still need to keep working on, which will help give us some idea of what to focus on in training over the next few months.
We would like to thank everyone who helped us get to the tournament – the volunteers, parents and carers who travelled up and supported the team, Herts County Netball and Omega Netball Club for supporting our weekly training sessions and Herts Inclusive Sports Initiative who funded various tournament expenses including team t-shirts, a kit bag, first aid kit and new training ball.
