Tuks’ netball team may have suffered its biggest defeat against Kovsies yesterday, but it would be a mistake to write the team off in the Varsity Tournament.
When the final whistle blew just after four in Kovsies’ Callie Human Indoor Sports Stadium yesterday, the score was Kovsies 73, Tuks 37. However, the score does not tell the whole story. The Tuks players played their hearts out to the end. On the day, Kovsies were simply the better team. Amanda Mynhardt, Tuks’ coach, admits this.
“We started off well. That is the positive we can take from the game. But I got to give credit to Kovsies for the way they played. They were a well-oiled machine. For us, that was a challenge.”
Mynhardt, however, was not despondent, saying she is confident that as the younger players in the team play more high-pressure games, it will lead to them becoming mentally stronger.
Up to halftime, Tuks were holding their own against Kovsies. In the second quarter, Kovsies scored 17 goals, while Tuks scored 13. It led to the team trailing by only 11 halfway through the game.
During an on-court television interview, Tuks’s captain, Caroline Paul, said that if the team could stick to the game plan, she is confident that they will make a fight out of it until the very last minute. There were, however, a few aspects of Tuks’s play that worried her.
“We are not clinical enough and not moving the ball forward. We need to execute better,” said Paul.
In the third quarter, the proverbial dam wall broke. Kovsies scored 23 goals in 15 minutes while Tuks could only add eight points to their total. Things did not go any better in the fourth quarter. Kovsies scored another 18 goals and conceded just eight.
It was not as if Tuks’s goal shooters, Marichelle Visagie and Anja van den Heever, had thrown in the towel. They were, in fact, quite resilient in the way they played. The problem was that Kovsies had managed to shut off nearly all avenues of getting the ball to Tuks’ goal circle. Still, Visagie and Van den Heever continued to try by playing the ball as many times as necessary with the aim of getting an opening to score.
As one of the more experienced players on the team, Visagie impressed with the way she inspires her teammates with moments of brilliance.
Jamie Williamson, who replaced Zionne Grobler quite early on during the game as goal shooter, also deserves a special mention. She was rock solid on defence from the moment she got on the court.
After three rounds, UJ is the only unbeaten team in the tournament, topping the log with 12 points. Kovsies and Northwest are jointly in third place with nine points, followed by Madibaz with eight points. Tuks is seventh with 4 points.
The Varsity Netball Tournament will continue from Sunday with play at the University of Pretoria’s Rembrandt Hall. On Sunday at 13:00, Tuks will play Northwest, and on Monday at 19:00, they will play Maties