Tournaments have been centre stage once again for ANZA Netball with two of our teams taking part in the annual Daisy Tan Tournament for U14’s in Singapore. Organised by Netball Singapore, the tournament is open to the best of local secondary schools and clubs throughout the island. With twenty teams entered into the U14 age group, the heat was on!
The 2010 ANZA Galaxy and 2011 ANZA Cyclones competed in this fun and friendly extravaganza at the Kallang Netball Centre with the weather behaving itself all morning. Both teams were placed in separate pools for the first stage, the round-robin part of the tournament.
Victory all round
ANZA Galaxy played some great netball against worthy opponents, winning five games and drawing against the favourites, TNA Elite A in their pool. In the second pool, ANZA Cyclones won a marvellous four matches, experienced one loss and one draw. After a round of playoffs, ANZA Cyclones and ANZA Galaxy had to face each other in the semi-finals – the stress! Both teams played really well with all the ANZA parents cheering together from the sidelines, and Cyclones only just missed out on a win against the Galaxy team.
Despite the loss, ANZA Cyclones stormed to victory in the bronze medal match against Singapore Netball Academy (SGNA) Singha, while ANZA Galaxy went through to the gold medal final against SGNA Lions, winning in a nail-biting match on the final whistle! A big thanks goes to Li Ling and Grace for their coaching on Saturday which led to a fantastic outcome for ANZA Netball placing first and third in the U14 category.
Little wonders
The youngest cohort at ANZA Netball are our 5 – 6 year-olds or those born in 2018. This age group joins the 6 -7 year-olds and play on the field at Tanglin Trust School every Saturday morning at 8am.
It’s fabulous to see so many volunteer coaches donning their ANZA coaching shirts and participating in the session, and the girls clearly love having their parents involved. Some are lucky enough to be able to chill from the sidelines. For our youngest players, the girls start off practicing with soft balls to gain confidence, work on hand-eye coordination, and learn how to reduce the risk of injury. They use bean bags to practice goal-shooting technique drills, and there are many games and relays to keep the sessions fun! What a lot of smiles (and cuteness)!
