Tight wins for St Stithians and Brescia House
On Tuesday evening, St Stithians College faced Northcliff High, while Parktown High School for Girls took on Brescia House in midweek league hockey clashes. Both contests were tightly contested.
St Stithians was at Northcliff, where the visitors were pushed hard. In the end, though, coach Lance Louw‘s Saints‘ side secured a narrow 2-1 victory.
Lucy Taylor netted for St Stithians and, crucially, Jessie Earlam scored her first-ever first-team goal. Both sides were effective at creating goal-scoring opportunities but less effective at finishing them, which made for an intense and nail-biting match.
Reflecting on his team’s performance, Louw expressed both satisfaction and frustration: “It’s always good to win, but we made it more difficult for ourselves than it needed to be,” he said.
“Northcliff is on the strong side, with some standout players. I asked the team to build on last week’s performance, and while we saw glimpses of that, it came in patches.
“The biggest lesson from tonight is to make the most of our opportunities. We created plenty of chances but made the game unnecessarily close by not finishing them off.”
Looking ahead, Louw highlighted areas that will need improvement: “We need to work on our finishing in the circle and being more confident and composed on the ball across the field. Consistency in our performance is also something we’ll be focusing on.”
Despite the missed chances, Saints held on to win and Louw praised his players for their overall effort and determination.
“It was a solid team performance, and that’s encouraging to see as we prepare for our upcoming ISSF (Independent Schools Sports Festival) tour to Durban. A special shoutout to Jessie Earlam for scoring the winning goal and her first ever for the first team. Well done, Jessie!”
In another evenly contested clash, Brescia House claimed a 2-1 win over Parktown High School for Girls.
Brescia showed grit, going a goal behind in the first chukka before fighting back to clinch a hard-fought victory.
While Parktown pressured Brescia in the first half, Brescia came out firing in the third chukka and struck twice to take the lead. Try as they might, Parktown was unable to break down their opponent’s sound defence in the last quarter.
In Pretoria, Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool (Affies) thumped Hoërskool Eldoraigne 5-0 in a one-sided outing.
Affies showed they meant business with an early goal, and they dominated from there.
Even though Eldoraigne lost, they displayed strong character and made Affies work hard for their victory. In the end, though, it was a comfortable outing for the winners.
