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Photos: Jack Western
After beating James College in a dramatic late comeback in the qualifiers, Halifax College returned to the tent on Sunday evening for the varsity netball 1sts hoping for a less exhausting affair against Van Mildert.
Van Mildert showed warnings of a difficult evening for the Halifax defence though, playing very well in the opening stages of the match and taking a lead of 6-1 early on. Halifax looked nervous in the opening stages of the match, with some careless passing as they tried to make a quick recovery. The Durham side’s attack showed impressive link up play and rarely missed any chance they had to score, creating a difficult job for Halifax GD Lottie Hyett and GK Sarah Moody.
Halifax were often forced into long passes when going forward which was easy to defend for the side from Durham and they led at the end of the first quarter 12-4.
There was much improvement from the Halifax girls in the second quarter, looking much stronger in attack and forcing their way back into the match, recovering the deficit to 15-7 to Van Mildert.
They were forced to make long passes forward as Durham pressed and continued to be swift and deadly in attack, leading York at halftime 19-14. Hyett and Moody gave a sterling effort in maintaining the wrath of Durham’s attacks but despite their strong defending Van Mildert kept pressing and gave Halifax little chance of getting back into the match.
To their credit however they kept their attacks coming and went into the final quarter chasing the game 31-21, similar to the score they recovered from in the qualifier against James so all hope was not lost. There were to be no heroics in this fixture however as Van Mildert closed in on their victory to prevail 38-28, a couple of well worked attacks not being enough for the York team to recover.
After the match, Halifax captain Sarah Moody seemed upbeat with her team’s performance, telling Vision ‘We were buzzing for Varsity, everyone played really well and it was a great atmosphere’.