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The Glen High School Sports Festival 2008

By on July 31, 2008 in High School

On Friday 25 July and Saturday 26 July the Glen High School hosted a sports festival that included soccer, netball, girls’ basketball and boys’ basketball. Due to the fact that the St. Peter’s festival, which was a highlight on most schools’ sporting calendars, was cancelled for this year, the Glen High School decided to host a “mini festival”. The festival divisions consisted of 4 schools from around Pretoria. Due to the number of teams, the divisions were run on a round-robin basis, with team finishing at the top pf the group winning the festival.

Rosina Sedibane Sport School (Pretoria League U19 champions), Pretoria Boys High School (Pretoria U19 League 3rd place finishers), CBC and The Glen High School Pretoria U16 league Champions) participated inthe boys basketball division. The Rosina boys’ team dominated the division putting very high scores on the board. This is a team that has an abundance of talent in both the post and guard positions. However, whatever talent they posses they loose in discipline, in respect of both behaviour and structured play. From a coaching point of view, I would love to see this talented team play a more structured form of basketball with better decision-making on the offensive and defensive side. All of the coaches who attended the festival, agreed that the Rosina boys team would give most teams in the LOP a hard time, if they had more discipline. Although the Rosina team dominated the boys group, as can be seen from the scores, they didn’t walk over teams with more structure in their defence. Rosina put up their lowest score against a Glen High outfit consisting of mostly U16 players, their No. 10 post, Tshepo Matsego, getting fouled out and only scoring 2 points. Not to take anything away from them, Rosina Sedibane Boys Basketball team is an excellent basketball team.

Sedibane Sports School (Pretoria U19 Girls Runners-up), Pretoria High School for Girls (Pretoria U19 Girls League Champions) and The Glen High School (Pretoria U19 Girls League 3rd place finishers) participated in the girls division of the festival. Due to an unexpected withdrawal from Gateway High School (Zimbabwe) a week from the start of the festival, the festival organisers had to invite Girls High’s U16 team (Pretoria U16 Girls Champions) in order to fill Gateway’s place. Having the top 3 girls’ teams in Pretoria competing with each other, the girls division was always going to be a close and very competitive affair. The festival’s opening match saw The Glen High team put a win against PHSG U16, in a rather lacklustre and slow paced match. The second match on Friday had league champs PHSG pitted against the league runners-up Rosina. If you remember, PHSG beat Rosina in the finals to take the league title, and it seemed like Rosina was looking to exert some revenge. The Rosina took the game to PHSG, winning by 4 points in overtime. Another revenge match was to happen on Saturday when the Glen team was scheduled against Rosina which beat the Glen in the league semi-finals. The Glen dominated the game, with Yolandi Heffer going 3-0 in her 3-pointer attempts, one of which was a foul and basket. After this match, Glen was at the top of the table having to win against their arch rivals, PHSG, to win the division. However, I believe the Glen team peaked in their match against Rosina and lost the game to PHSG. At this point PHSG, Rosina and the Glen were tied at the top of the log, with winners being decided on pint difference. PHSG won the division, by 3 points, on a greater point difference.

The whole girls division was marred with missed open shots, probably due to the fact they were not used to hard hoops. A mention also has to be said of the inconsistent referees, which were professional referees, the same guys that referee the LOP matches. For the fee that is paid to the referees, one would expect a certain level of professionalism would have been displayed.

All in all the festival was a success and we hope to extend on the success of the festival to make it bigger and better in the upcoming years.

Article supplied by Bojan Palic

Final results and log standings

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