On Friday 15 January, the Queenswood U16 indoor hockey team travelled up to Bromsgrove School to compete in the National Schools Indoor Finals. It was a huge achievement, as Queenswood have never before had an U16 indoor team qualify for a national final.

The competition consisted of two days of matches; two on the Friday and then two on the Saturday. We were drawn in Pool A with Repton, Millfield, Sir Williams Borlase and Wakefield. We knew that we had some tough competition, but we are always up for a challenge!

Our first match was against Repton, who have many talented hockey players. We all knew that we couldn’t let our nerves get the best of us, so tried to focus on what we had to do. The final score was 6-1 to Repton, with our first goal of the tournament coming from Maddy Wray. The score did not reflect how well we played as a team, and we tried not to let it knock our confidence.

Our final match for Friday was against Sir Williams Borlase, with the final score being 3-2 to Borlase. This was quite disappointing for us as we all played exceptionally well as a team, but got unlucky when attacking. The two goals were scored by Maddy Wray and Milly Davies.

After an early start to Saturday morning, we had our next game against Millfield, who are also a very talented team. Our main focus was to create more options to get the ball into our attacking end. Unfortunately, we didn’t score any goals, with the final score at 3-0 to Millfield.

With our last match coming up, we were all committed to come away with a win against Wakefield. At half time the score was tied at 1-1, with an exceptional goal from Gabby M-P. Once again we were unlucky, just missing out on the win by one goal. The final score was 3-2 to Wakefield with Queenswood’s final goal from Milly Davies.

Even though we came away without a win, we all really enjoyed the experience of playing at our first ever National Indoor Final – and hopefully it was not our last! There are high hopes for the future of the U16 indoor team. We couldn’t have got this far without our coach, Miss Pratt and manager, Mrs Wakeley who have encouraged us all the way, both in training and in matches. This was an unforgettable experience for the whole team!

• Coach – Rebecca Pratt
• Manager – Jo Wakeley
• Jessica Hurley (capt)
• Lucy Wakeley (vice capt)
• Brooke Henley
• Catryn Langley
• Maddy Wray
• Milly Davies
• Chloe Munro
• Lara Sikka
• Marina Baldwin
• Gabriella Murray-Panayioutou