Monkton Hockey Girls crowned Regional Champions

A Monkton U14 Hockey team, made up of a combined group of Year 9's and Year 8's attended the West Regional Finals of the England Hockey Tier 2 Competition on Thursday 11 November, held at Millfield School. The team had qualified before the October half term by finishing as runner up at the Avon County Competition, which was held at Clifton College. It was wonderful to have such collaboration amongst the two Year groups who although are based at different campuses, gelled together on and off the pitch seamlessly.

Last week's school assembly report put together by the girls reads as follows:

"A Monkton U14 Hockey team made up of players from both Monkton Senior and Monkton Prep travelled to Millfield to take part in the Tier 2 England Hockey Regional Championships, which had 15 schools attending from across the West of England, travelling in from as far away as Truro in Cornwall.

We qualified for this event by finishing as runners up in the County Championships held in Bristol in October.

The games were only 15 minutes one way, so we had to start quickly, play forward and try to score first. Once we were up in a game we had strict instructions from Miss Howell to “defend our little hearts out”, which we did in every game!

We topped our pool, with wins over Kings Ottery, Hereford Cathedral and Sherborne. 

In the quarter finals we beat Cheltenham Ladies College 2-0, before dispatching Dauntsey’s 1-0 in the semifinal. In the final, we came up against Hereford Cathedral, a team we had already beaten in our Pool matches. Despite having the better of the chances in the final it ended 0-0 and we had to go to a penalty shoot out. We scored 3 of our first 4 penalties, while Rosie Baker was amazing in goal for us and saved 3 of their penalties, and we won the shootout 3-1 to be crowned Regional U14 Tier 2 Champions.

It was a wonderful experience and we all had such a good day out. While we knew we would be competitive, none of us expected to win the whole tournament so it was an awesome way to end the day. A big thank you to Miss Howell, Mr Hibbert and Mr James who coached and managed us.

We are now looking forward to our trip to Nottingham for the National Finals in February 2022."

Saskia Davies & Emma Hibbert (Co-Captains)