Hallsy's Weekly Look Around the Academy

Worthing College Netball Performance Programme coach Tina Price praised her squad after they defeated all before them in the Sussex Round of the National Schools Under 19 Netball Tournament, held at Roedean School. Price was extremely pleased with the team's consistently high performance levels throughout when saying "all the girls played their part across the whole day and it was great to see them all perform both individually and as a team, especially as the windy conditions were not ideal for free flowing netball." The tournament itself was a round robin format where 11 teams across the County battled it out for the top two places to move onto the Regional part of the competition. Worthing were taking on the best teams in the area, with a majority being from private schools. Worthing started off against one of the favourites to progress, Hurstpierpoint College, but Worthing tore up the form book to win 6-2. With this impressive win under their belts, Worthing went from strength to strength by beating the hosts, Roedean (13-1), Collyers (9-1), BHASVIC (3-2), Ardingly College (2-1), St Bedes (3-1), Imberhorne of East Grinstead (3-0), Moira House (W/O), Mayfield (10-2) and finally Brighton College (5-4). These set of results are even more impressive as Worthing were only behind once all day, which was in the last match against Brighton College. Worthing College qualified as the top team in Sussex with Hurstpierpoint College as runners up. Both sides will represent Sussex in the Regional Round of this competition at The G4S Netball Centre in East Grinstead on January 28th. Price concluded by saying "all players in the Performance Programme have worked hard to develop their performance technically, tactically and mentally. This is really bearing fruit at a local, regional and hopefully national level, which is something all of the girls in the programme should be proud of."

The Worthing College Sports Performance Programme could have up to 8 students representing their country this season. The 8 students are through to the final part of the British Colleges' selection process, which are training camps that will take place over the next 2-3 weekends. The Rugby Performance Programme have three students through to this stage. Dec Peake, Brad Parker and Charlie Watts impressed during their two trials matches, where they were all a major part of victories against the South West and the Midlands. Rugby Performance Programme coach Ben Coulson was "ecstatic" about the news, which broke on Wednesday; "these students, along with Elliott Luke & Pat White (who just missed out) represented themselves and the College impeccably and this should be something that the squad as a whole should take on as a great success to aid their own development." Coulson also singled out special praise for Pat White even though he just missed out, when saying "Pat is relatively new to Rugby as he only took the game up in Year 11. Even though he just missed out this shows that Pat has worked extremely hard to take advantage of the fantastic opportunity he has at the Sports Performance Programme and combined this with a natural talent to become a promising rugby player after his time with us. This is a fantastic story and should inspire others to get into schools or club rugby even in year 10/11 and work hard to develop their own performance and who knows where that could take them." In addition to these three students, three women footballers, Lucy Somes, Darcey James and Danielle Lane, netball player Mele Jackson and hockey player Ellis Woolley have also made it to this stage, which prompted Sports Performance Programme Co-ordinator Tina Price to say "these individual successes should be celebrated by all programme members and the College as a whole. The aim of the Sports Performance Programme is for students to develop their sporting performance and to combine this with their academic study and this is evident as all squads and individuals are showing that they can compete at a National level as well as performing well in the classroom. This has been an meteoric rise from the start of the programme 5 years ago and all involved are looking forward to developing talented sports performers for years to come."

Onwards & Upwards,

Hallsy