Focused Rhenish ready for St Mary’s Hockey Festival challenge
A lot of noise has been made about the Rhenish Girls’ High School’s hockey first team, and rightfully so. After an outstanding season in 2024, the girls from Stellenbosch have picked up from where they left off and made some big statements early in the season.
They began competitive action with two pre-season victories against Rustenburg Girls’ High, winning those matches 5-2 and 11-1, respectively.
Coach Chris Gerber‘s team then travelled to East London for the Synsport Greg Beling Festival.
Rhenish dominated the field at the festival in 2024 and emulated those performances, beating Clarendon High School for Girls, Bethlehem Voortrekker, Oranje Meisieskool, St Anne’s DSG, and Eunice High School.
In total, Gerber’s charges scored 21 goals and conceded only three. Despite their successes, the coach believes there’s plenty of room for improvement.
“The most important thing for us at Greg Beiling was to elevate our structure and expand on what we have already been doing,” Gerber told SuperSport Schools Plus.
“It was good to play against some of the top teams because we always want to play at the highest possible level we can. We learnt a lot. We still have development areas we need to work on as a team.”
After the tournament in East London, Rhenish had a week-long break to recover and get themselves ready for the Standard Bank St Mary’s Waverley Hockey Festival, an event at which they finished 11th last year.
The prestigious festival is one of the most competitive and gruelling girls’ hockey tournaments in the country.
Rhenish has been drawn in Pool C and will face the hosts, St Mary’s Waverley, along with St Stithians Girls’ College, St Mary’s DSG, from Kloof, St Cyprian’s School, Clarendon, Pretoria High School for Girls, and debutants, Windhoek High School.
“This festival is so unique because we get to play teams from all different areas,” Gerber said. “We also get to test ourselves against teams we don’t play week in and week out.
“It will be a completely different challenge, but we are looking forward to it.”
The busy schedule features matches that last for 25 minutes of running time.
Managing players and using the wider squad will be crucial, but Gerber insisted Rhenish’s approach would be simple.
“The most important thing for us is to take it game-by-game, and we can’t look too far ahead as anything can happen in this tournament.
“We need to adapt and be in the moment for every single game.”
RHENISH SQUAD
Jasmine Aitken, Amy-Leigh Gibson, Shene du Plessis, Emma Lurie, Puck Bakker, Kathrine Sickle, Grace Hobbs, Lily Newton, Sarah-Ellen Groenewald, Leah du Plessis (c), Sarah Oscroft, Pippa Viljoen, Nicola van der Merwe, Ruby Cilliers, Frankie Henn.
CLICK HERE FOR DAY 1 FIXTURES
