Bee Netball Leagues reach their Finals!

It has been a busy few weeks with the South Cambs School Sport Partnership Bee Netball finals taking place across three venues. The finals are the culmination of a year round league which is hosted at 7 secondary school sites across South Cambs with Round 1 matches in October and Round 2 in March. The recent finals involved 41 teams from 26 different schools and over 300 pupils as well as over 40 sports leaders from the partnerships Leadership Academy programme who helped to officiate the matches.

B Team Finals

The first of the finals nights was for all of the B teams who had played in their local leagues. This final took place at Northstowe Secondary college with 14 teams competing against each other. After the first round of matches the teams were organised into different divisions for the finals. In the top division were Swavesey, Histon Brook, Willingham and Barton.  The standard of netball across all of the courts was excellent and the feedback from the event was very positive from all who took part. After a round of competitive and close matches, Swavesey Primary school took the overall B team title with Histon Brook primary school finishing in second place.

The overall finishing positions from all schools from the B tournament were:

A team Plate Finals

The A team finals are split into two competitions the Plate and the shield. The plate is for all of the A teams who finished in the second half of their local league. Played at Impington Village College this featured 12 teams with Histon Brook, Linton, Gamlingay and Pathfinder being the four teams to make it through to the top division after the first round of matches. The sports leaders from Impington VC umpired all the matches using the skills they have developed from being part of the leadership academy. After a display of excellent netball across all of the courts the overall winners who retained the title for the second year running were Histon Brook who were unbeaten throughout the evening, with Linton finishing as runners up. Both teams were presented with medals to recognise their achievement. Well done to all schools who took part.

The final plate positions were:

A team Shield finals

Fourteen primary schools competed in the A Team Shield which was held at Comberton Village College after finishing in the top half of their local leagues. The top four teams from this competition qualify for the BEE Netball County Finals which are taking place on Wednesday 22^nd May at St Ives.

The schools were split into three pools, with each team playing all of their rivals within that group to determine whether they qualified into Division 1, 2 or 3 for the next round of matches. The standard of netball across all of the teams was exceptionally high and it was great to see the level of improvement from all teams across the rounds, especially with their shooting accuracy.

After the first round of matches, it was Swavesey, Great Abington, The Vine School and Trumpington who went into pool 1 to play for the title. It was an extremely close competition, but the accurate shooting of Great Abington primary school meant that they finished as winners of the competition. All of the games were played in great spirit and the sports leaders from Comberton VC made sure that all matches were being played to the rules and that all of the teams enjoyed the event. Schools also nominated other teams for their demonstration of the spirit of the games values and after receiving four separate nominations from different schools, Pendragon Primary school were awarded Spirit of the games for their excellent team work and support for each other.

The full results from the competition were:

The Vine school, Trumpington Park and Swavesey will all now represent South Cambs at the County finals and they will be joined by Barton primary school as Great Abington are unable to attend. We wish all of these teams the best of luck at this competition.

Tournament organiser, Julia Scarboro said, “Our annual Bee Netball League is one of our most popular competitions, we had a large number of schools entering the leagues and the standard of netball improves every year, and this year it was definitely our best yet. I must thank all of our host secondary schools for running the local league competitions and a very big thank you to Impington VC, Northstowe Secondary college and Comberton Village Colleges for hosting the finals nights and of course the sports leaders who gave up their time to help umpire all of the matches and manage the score table. They really did an outstanding job this year.