The U13 Girls headed over to Cheltenham to compete against the top 20 IAPS teams from the regional rounds, held around the country earlier in the term. We had placed 1st at our Regional competition down at Charterhouse and the girls were keen to test themselves. We had The Dragon, Cargilfield, Greshams and Cumnor House in our group and we knew that we needed to place in the top 2 in order to go through to the cup. In our opening match against The Dragon we were a little slow out of the blocks and with 7 minutes each way we needed to be more clinical in our finishing and could not break through with a 0-0 draw. The girls bounced back in a scrappy game against Cargilfield with Bella scoring an outstanding reverse hit into the top corner to help us to a 3-2 win. Up next was Greshams, who looked to be the ones to watch. We had a game plan though and Minty played a blinder (by) stopping their key player from getting free.Every girl played their part and we fought until the dying seconds to give ourselves a 2-0 win which caused a huge upset. Last up, was Cumnor and we knew if we won that game we would top the group but things didn’t go our way to start and we went down a goal. The girls didn’t let their heads drop though and they kept going and clawed a goal back to get a 1-1 draw. That meant we had finished 2nd in the group on points and faced Repton who were the winners of their group and the pre-tournament favourites. The girls knew they had nothing to lose and went for it against a supremely gifted side. The standard of play was fantastic and we were on the receiving end of some superb individual skill to go down early on in the match, but the girls kept battling away and managed to get the score line back to 2-2. We just didn’t have enough left in the tank to stop Reptons and they deservedly saw out the win with the final score 2-4. Repton went on to make the finals where they ended up losing 2-3 to Greshams who we had beaten earlier on in the day in our group stages!Over 100 teams enter the U13 IAPS tournament and finishing in the top 8 is an outstanding effort from our girls. Thank you to our wonderful parents for all their support on the side-lines; it felt like we were playing at Wembley and definitely gave us that edge in our matches.
10 Dec 2024 
