A sport not for the faint hearted and a tournament with a legacy for seeing South African sports legends born, Varsity Netball commences again this year, on the 5th September, offering university teams across the country the chance to aim for gold and show their colours.
The hashtag #ShowYourColours has definitely been a fitting slogan for Varsity Netball over the past two years. The competition, which is currently in its fourth year running, takes place at venues countrywide, with eight South African university teams participating. With NWU-Pukke the reigning champions of last year´s tournament, competition for first place will be tighter than ever.
A different sports structure and fitness level, place teams such as Tuks, Pukke and Maties a cut above the rest. Despite this, UCT Netball coach, Sue Schooling says that her team “is definitely more experienced than last year” and “has more consistencies”. The fact that the team was successful in qualifying for their section and getting into the tournament in the first place, is already a good sign.
UCT plan to go into the competition with confidence and hope to repeat previous strong performances. Consistency of players and the improvement of physical form is also high on their list of priorities, due to their hopes of preventing various injuries and last-minute player withdrawals that plagued and stunted their performances in the past. After last year´s disappointing loss in the semi-final against the Pukke, in what was a tight game, UCT aim to close any gaps preventing them from victory.
As their team motto goes, “Give it 100% until the end”. And that is exactly what they aim to do on their road to success. Their first game will be against VUT in Stellenbosch on the 5th September; a game that the team is feeling very positive about, due to the fact that a victory against VUT is already under their belt.
Not only is the team going in with experience and lessons learnt from the 2015 preceding tournament, but they also possess a fresh group of players, hungry to do their best. “One of our biggest challenges,” says captain Simone Peters, “is adapting to a new team every year with new people, whereas other teams have set players each year. We aim to make the best with who we have. Last year was a definite learning curb, but I am very proud of the team and am impressed with their performance thus far.”
Players to look out for on the court are: Fortuna Bagula, Yeukai Chamba, Phumi Shandu and last but not least, captain of the team Simone Peters.
Support UCT team at this year´s Varsity Netball by showing your colours and bringing some proud UCT gees. You can catch all the action on SuperSport Select, channel 210.
By Jessie Leverzencie
