Clarendon High are up for the fight when they defend their title in the SPAR Schoolgirls Hockey Challenge in East London on Sunday – despite having lost a majority of their title-winning squad from last year.<\/p>\n
After winning the East London Coastal tournament a year ago, the team went on to capture the overall title in the provincial finals at Woodridge, near Port Elizabeth, in August.<\/p>\n
Coach Cheryl Pope knows they will be a marked side going into Sunday’s action at Stirling, but said they were excited about the tournament.<\/p>\n
“Obviously there is a bit of pressure as is always the case when you are out to retain a title,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We have seven new players in our squad this year, but the girls are always up for a challenge and they will definitely embrace the competition with a 100% effort and focus.”<\/p>\n
She said she thought the format of the Schoolgirls Challenge was a wonderful chance to see how the players of all schools could perform under pressure.<\/p>\n
“Playing these shorter games (over 25 minutes) with no halftime is always adrenaline-fuelled and unpredictable,” said Pope.<\/p>\n
“This brings a \u2018sudden-death’ mentality and a high level of intensity to the competition.”<\/p>\n
She said their approach would be to try to remain as composed as possible, while aiming to dominate from the start.<\/p>\n
“An early goal is always first prize and decision-making, therefore, takes a central role.”<\/p>\n
In addition to the unpredictable nature of the format, Pope said there was healthy competition among the participating teams which made for an exciting event.<\/p>\n
“At Clarendon, we love taking part in this tournament and are looking forward to a thrilling day of hockey.<\/p>\n
“Schools like Hudson Park and Stirling have very talented teams, but the way the format is structured means all teams have a chance of winning.<\/p>\n
“I can only encourage hockey players and supporters of the game to come and watch the girls in action.<\/p>\n
“The tournament provides a wonderful platform for up-and-coming players to get involved in a competitive but fun environment.”<\/p>\n
SPAR EC sponsorship and events manager Alan Stapleton said they were excited at the resumption of the competition at Stirling.<\/p>\n
“The Hockey Challenge is so important to us as it allows us to talk to and be involved with communities in our bigger geographical area,” he said.<\/p>\n
“SPAR has an impressive footprint in the area because of a really, motivated and innovative group of retailers, so it will be good to wave our banners in East London again on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We are looking forward to another competitive day of camaraderie and quality girls hockey.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clarendon High are up for the fight when they defend their title in the SPAR Schoolgirls Hockey Challenge in East London on Sunday – despite having lost a majority of their title-winning squad from last year. After winning the East London Coastal tournament a year ago, the team went on to capture the overall title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2843,1768,2614,2413,1898,1759,1765],"class_list":["post-18184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-clarendon-high","tag-hockey","tag-schoolgirls-hockey","tag-schoolgirls-hockey-challenge","tag-spar","tag-spar-eastern-cape","tag-spar-schoolgirls-hockey-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}