U9 and U11 Rounder’s teams travelled to Stafford Prep school on Thursday 21 June to take part in the ISA Rounders tournament. The tournament had received a record number of entries this year with 16 schools involved in the U11 and 9 schools in the U9.
The tournament was organised into two pools and then the final round based upon the pool results. This enabled all students to have lots opportunity to play lots of different schools.
The U11 team peaked at just the right time, having had a warm-up game against Kingsley the night before to iron out and improve development areas. It seems to have paid dividends!
They took on Birchfield, Old Vicarage and St Joseph’s in their pool and played fantastically, winning their first game against St Josephs 9-4 and then beating Birchfield 6-4 with some amazing batting from Georgia Dowling, Olivia Sarkies, Amelie Edge and some fantastic running from Olivia Monk, Rebecca Montieth and Mia Webb who watched the ball well and took advantage of misfielded balls to hit and score full rounders.
The winner of the pool all rested on the final game against The Old Vicarage. It was a strong and close game which unfortunately finished with Old Vicarage winning 4-3.
This put us in the second pool for round 2, looking to secure 5th-8th place. In this round we took on Malvern St James, St Winifred’s and Highfield Knoll. Again fabulous consistent bowling from Clara Woolf put us in contention for all games with solid fielding from all players, with Lucy Hardy and Mia Webb moving in and out of field to support balls coming in to bases from the Olivia Sarkies, Sophie Causer and Cara Ridd who were out in the deep field.
Results were:
Malvern St James 10.5 Crescent 9
St Winifred’s 11 Crescent 2
Highfield Knoll 8 Crescent 8
Fabulous team play from all students involved.
Mrs McCollin
The U9 team started their first pool game against Birchfield School in a positive fashion and fielded well. They then backed this up with some confident running whilst batting. With only 20 balls to score from the girls had to make the most of their opportunities and they did this well finishing with a 8-7 win. The next pool game was equally close against a strong Dodderhill side. There were some close run outs and some more great batting, but this time Crescent lost by just half a rounder, 7-7½. This left us second in the pool and fighting for 4th-6th place.
Our next opponents were the host school Stafford Grammar and the girls really upped their game for this match. Positive running and batting gave us a really good score to defend and much better decisions in the field resulted in run outs coming thick and fast at 2nd post, preventing Stafford from scoring. Added to this was an outstanding bowling display from Amelie Frere and Crescent secured a comfortable win 10-3.
Our final match was against Crackley Hall and the winner of this would take 4th place. Crescent batted first and found Crackley to be a very slick fielding side and despite our best efforts restricted our scoring. Crescent would now need an outstanding fielding performance to win. I was so proud to see the girls' confidence and learning from the days' play in evidence from the off and without a doubt they produced their best fielding display of the day. Unfortunately it was not quite enough and we lost the final game by a nail biting 2 rounders - 3 rounders.
I would like to congratulate the girls for their fantastic attitude and behaviour throughout the day, they were a pleasure to take and it made me very proud to have so much positive feedback about them from other school staff. It really was a day where you could see the improvement from match to match and I hope that they all enjoyed their day as much as I did, they should be very proud of themselves.
Mrs Dowling
