After two devastating losses as well as one enormous win for UP-Tuks, they have not dropped their heads just yet and they have decided to remain focused on what their goals are in this competition and where they want to be.
These ladies will continue fighting for one another as well as their technical staff and this was seen in their unfortunate loss against NWU-Pukke this past Monday.
After catching up with the Tuks Netball head coach, Jenny van Dyk who is an ex- University of Pretoria student as well as a USSA club Champion netball player who experienced victory three times in a row with Tuks, it is clear to see she strives for success.
However, at the same time she wants her athletes to be able to develop not only as athletes on the court but as better people off of it.
Van Dyk has worked very hard to be the University of Pretoria head coach. It isn’t a position easily filled by anyone.
This fiery, passionate and friendly coach has been coaching for 12 years now and has worked her way up the ranks, starting with school leagues in 2001 and slowly being able to secure a position as a Tuks coach with the U/19 team in 2006, to now being a USSA Tuks coach who has been coaching for the club for eight consecutive years.
She strongly believes that this competition is one of the best things that her athletes can experience, she stated they do have their USSA league and Club championships during the year but this is a platform that is on a whole different level for her athletes to be able to showcase their talents and abilities as well as gaining exposure.
She is overwhelmed that her athletes are able to experience a competition of this magnitude just because of the experience they are able to gain out of it.
Even with two of her senior players out due to being away with the National team (Melissa Myburgh and Vanes-Mari Du Toit) and two of them out due to injury (Izette Lubbe and Jeanie Steyn both S.A u/21 players) she still believes in her team and she also stated that this is a perfect opportunity for the juniors of the team.
“The most important thing is that the players keep on learning and becomes better as we go through the competition, there is no use that we come into this competition and we going to be as good as we started, we are striving to learn.
“Because it’s a different format we decided to come in and learn as much as we can so that we can continue to grow and become better as the competition progresses,” she said.
There is a lot of pressure on Tuks to win this competition as the fourth sporting code of the University of Pretoria to win a Varsity Sports competition this year, but Jenny stated that this can also be taken into a different light and it can end up giving a lot of confidence to her athletes, because it shows that it is possible.
“Look what happened with Varsity Football – Tuks lost their first game badly but they still ended up coming out on top so it just shows even though we lost there is still a fighting chance we can always come back.
“It’s a Tuks sport system that is strong and developing champion’s not just specific sports codes, so we are very fortunate and our aim is to use the resources we have. I am not forcing my girls to go out and give their best performance every game, but ultimately the players need to go onto the court and do as much as possible but I am allowing them to become better instead of forcing them to go out there and give their best performance every game.
I would rather prefer seeing them develop and I won’t be disappointed with them when they lose. I told them this is our lesson, all we can do is now take this loss and use it as a lesson and learn, learn, learn.
“The club is very fortunate to have five National players two of these ladies being in our USSA team and one as our assistant coach Erin Burger. So our aim is not to win but rather develop the players for what’s still to come after the competition,” she added.
By Gabriella Ferreira
