U12 girls National IAPS Hockey Finals

Last Sunday (22 November) the Under 12 girls travelled up to Bradfield College and stayed nearby in a local Premier Inn. Monday morning arrived and after a good breakfast and a lot of defrosting of the minibus we travelled to Bradfield for a chilly but dry day of hockey.

Our first game was against Taunton School which we won 2-1 and that was followed by another 2 -1 win over Feltonfleet. We then played the toughest game of our group and lost 1-2 to Foremarke Hall in a very exciting and close encounter. We knew then that we needed to win the remaining two group games which we did, beating Chesham 4-0 and then Bromsgrove 3-0. That was enough for us to win the group and play Moor Park in the semi-final.

The temperature had dropped and it was now dark but we were keen to get playing; we knew there was a place in the national final at stake and it was all to play for. We won 1-0 in a game that we played probably our best hockey of the day. Into the final we marched and the stage was set for an encounter with our local rivals – Millfield.

By this stage of the day we had already played 120 minutes of hockey and the girls from both schools were looking tired. After 20 minutes the score remained 0-0 and we knew that penalty shuffles loomed. After each team had taken three shuffles the score was 1-1 and we moved to sudden death. Unfortunately on round 3 Millfield scored and we couldn’t quite get the ball past their goalkeeper.

We were very proud of the Hazlegrove girls who had truly given their all. We proudly congratulated Millfield and were delighted with our silver medals – a very fine achievement.