St. Faiths v Wellingborough

Just before our match against the Perse Prep, we played a team called Wellingborough, who are usually good at sport. Today, however, this was not the case.

Our opposition had a shaky start, with some brilliant bowling and fielding by us to add to that. Wickets were coming easily and we were not conceding many runs. They ended up with just 51 runs for 7 wickets, a record for us.

We polished off Wellingborough with some good batting, although our opening batsmen did get out when they shouldn't have, both lofting the ball to get caught out by their fielders. I was number four and the last batsman to go in. Once Sam, the No.2, had connected the last shot of the match, a boundary, we knew that this was our best performance of the season.

St. Faiths v Perse Prep

The Perse started off their game bowling really well, getting our Nos. 1 and 2 caught out. Their fielding was good as well, but they still conceded exactly 100 runs. Our middle order batsmen saved us from being trashed by the Perse bowlers.

Unfortunately for the Perse, they were more of a bowling team, and we were getting a steady stream of wickets against them. We were starting to learn how to adjust ourselves in the field, like to cover the position for whoever is bowling, or to adjust when a left handed batsman comes on. At the end of the match, the Perse had scored a respectable 70 runs.

St Faiths vs Kings Ely

On the bus to Ely, our team decided that we would try batting first if we won the toss because bowling first had brought us mediocre results of 1 win and a loss. The toss was in favour of Kings Ely, but they wanted to bowl first, so everyone was happy.

We batted well, and their bowlers were not the best, so we scored a lot of runs. The thing is, we didn't actually hit a lot of the bowls. If you bowl a wide or no bowl you concede 2 runs. A lot of their bowls were pea rollers, so we couldn't hit them, or wide, so we couldn't hit them. Still our batters scored many runs and two of them, Sam and Jacob, were asked to retire because they had both scored so many runs. Our final score ended up at 136.

Our bowling was good, although we did concede more no bowls and wides than we wanted to. In general, it was uneventful, but there was one batman who kept on switching hands, and his coach kept on telling him just to bat right handed. There was one play when he batted in a left handed stance, then when the bowler bowled the ball he switched and took a swing at the ball. Their final score was 63. We won, but we can still improve our game.

St Faiths vs Felsted

Felsted are one of the schools that are excellent in sport, but we still had high hopes for that away match after coming from a comfortable win over St. Johns.

We won the coin toss and chose to bowl first, so that when we batted, we knew what score we needed to beat in order to win.. We started well, collecting wickets every so often. Unsurprisingly, Toby, our best bowler, took most of them.

Suddenly,a pair of middle order batsmen started a rhythm of quick singles and sensible batting. They scored many, many runs and our confidence began to droop. However, once Toby had bowled one of them out, we started our bowling rhythm again. This was not enough, though, as Felsted scored a massive 137 runs.

After tea, we started batting to get as many runs as possible. Felsted's bowlers were excellent, though, and they held us at 97 runs all out. It was a disappointing day for the B team.

St. Faiths vs. St. Johns

My very first cricket match ever was a thriller to participate in. I really felt more English than ever while playing. It's too bad that we have to move back to America in 2 1/2 months.

Anyway, we lost the coin toss at the beginning, but we still got to bowl, which was what we wanted; we would know what score to beat when we moved on to batting. Toby, our captain, bowled brilliantly, collecting 6 wickets in the 8 overs (1 over=6 bowls) that he bowled. Our other bowlers added another three wickets to our resume, and Sam caught one of their shots as well. After we had gotten their last batter out, we had only conceded 77 runs. Therefore, we needed only around 3 to 4 runs per over in order to win, considering that the maximum was 25 overs.

We batted so-so; we need to play more reasonable shots rather than just trying to club the ball every time. However, our opening batsman, John, stayed in for the duration of our innings, scoring about half of our total runs. It was our No. 8 batsman who sealed the win with the winning 4 runs, though.

Cricket

Today was our first cricket training session. We played a bunch of cricket games, and tomorrow we will do cricket drills. I am quite liking the sport, and I've recently been playing at break. I have already bowled out 3 people so far. Pretty lucky for a rookie, eh?

U11 Cambs Mini Hockey Tournament Part 2

Right now you are probably thinking, "Huh? I thought St. Faiths already did the tournament and were runners-up to St. Johns." Well, St. Johns were disqualified after they won the tournament because of their over age player, so the semi-finalists and the team that moved up from St. Johns' group to take their place played against each other to decide who would go to the East playoffs. Since only three teams showed up, we all played the other two teams and the Cambs winner would be decided by goal difference.

First, we played Saffron Walden. They lost to us in the normal tournament semi-finals, and the outcome in today's game proved similar, with our team winning 3-0. However, our coach told us that we could have played even better. All the training we had done on defending and utilizing set pieces paid off.

We then faced Rackham, who have an electric centre-half (by this, I mean he has very, very good control over the ball when he has it) who proved almost impossible to tackle. During the match, we held him off maybe a bit better than last time, but not enough to prevent him from scoring the winning, and only, goal of the match. We had plenty of times in which we could have converted chances at goal, too, but sadly, they were of no use to us.

While the team were playing around with some hockey balls and shooting at the spare goals, we stole some glances at Saffron Walden losing 2-1 to Rackham. Rackham went to the Eastern playoffs for the second year in a row and we ended up with the same runners-up medals that we had been awarded earlier.

St. Faiths v Bishop's Stortford

Everyone really wanted to win this game, as it was the last match of the season, and Bishop's Stortford are not a really spectacular team, but they are certainly not rubbish either. Our team reckoned that we could beat them.

At the beginning of the match, Edward did very well to nick the ball off their centre-half, but did nothing with it and we soon lost the ball. Soon, however, we had won it back. Will played magnificently again today, and he crossed the ball in to Edward, who chipped the ball first touch over the goalie's head.

However, our joys were short-lived, because I was not marking Stortford's right half very well, and he tipped a goal in off a cross from Stortford's left half..

At halftime, our coach lectured us about putting chances at goal away, especially me, because whenever crosses come in, it is my job to deflect them in.

During the second half, I did exactly what I was supposed to do and equalized at 2-2 by deflecting Edward's cross in between the goalkeeper's legs. Annoyingly, Stortford squeezed in a winning goal in the dying minutes, so all our work was for nothing.

Man of the Match: Tom (goalkeeper) for his brilliant saves

Goals: Edward, me

St. Faiths vs Felsted

Apparently, Felsted beat a school called Greshams 8-0. We lost to Greshams 7-2. So we were expecting to be thrashed by Felsted. However, that was not the case.

In the first half we started off well, with Edward scoring to put us ahead 1-0. However, we had lots of chances that we should have put away. Both teams were evenly matched, although Felsted out-witted us with their short, clever passes.

The second half was a goal-fest. Our team broke down with our marking and Felsted slipped in 5 goals. Will put in a goal for us after a scramble for the ball after an intercepted cross. At the end of the game, Edward cleverly created a short corner for us before he scored after Lewis passed to him.

Final Score: Felsted 5 St Faiths 3

Cambs U11 Mini Hockey Tournament

This was a rather strange tournament, because there were 11 teams playing, so the pools were of 6 and 5, so our pool had to play one more game than the other. Also, St John's centre-forward was 12, because he was held back a year. So he probably shouldn't have been allowed to play since it was a U11 tournament, rather than U12, but I guess he was allowed to play anyway.

Well, we got off to a good start, winning our matches against St. Ives and Cambs City (City have a guy who goes to St. Faiths!)1-0 and 3-0 respectively with Sewelly scoring against St. Ives and Lewis with 2 goals and me with 1 against Cambs city. We then drew against St Johns, and we gave them a jolly good run for their money.

Immediately afterward, we beat City of Peterborough 3-1. Peterborough had a funny formation. They seemed to have 3 in the centre, two wingers and 1 back. Obviously, the midfielders supported the lone defender but it was strange nonetheless.

In the next game against Rackham, we really had a huge load on our shoulders. They had won last year, if we lost we just might not be able to make it to the semis, and they too had a Charlie Fields-type player. We discovered that this guy was better than Charlie. One of the two goals that he scored involved lobbing the ball over our goalie's head and watching it bounce its way in. The game was lost 3-2. In fact, we were leading until their electric midfielder scored his goals. Now all of our hope was on goal differences.

It started to rain furiously when we found out that we had got through and were facing Saffron Walden, the winners of the other pool. We overcame them easily, even though the rain slowed us down. One one occasion, I attempted to hit the ball, but My stick was so slippery that It flew out of my hands and skidded, going farther than the ball itself. Saffron got a free hit for that because it was 'dangerous'. Well, of course it's dangerous but it is nearly impossible to hit the ball properly in the pouring rain!

The finals was a rematch of one of our group stages. Guess who? It was Johns. I won't give you a second by second description and make the suspense of the tournament unbearable, firstly because it might get boring and secondly because there wasn't actually all that much suspense. They beat us and won the trophy. All I can say is, they were lucky to have been able to play their 12 year old. Good luck to them in the regional tournament!

St. Faiths vs St Johns

Our St Faiths side always seem to face teams that have one really electric kid. In St John's case, it was Charlie Fields. A couple of men on our team go to the same club as him, and they said he was really good.

That, indeed, was the case. He would skill all of our men out and then absolutely thwack the ball at our helpless goalie. He scored twice, and had an assist for their centre-forward to poke in.

Obviously, St Johns won, but we put up a fight at the other end of the pitch. Our only problem up front was that we couldn't get the ball into the goal. That is, except for once. Freddie took a 16 and passed it to me. I drove, and then as I was approaching St John's right winger, I passed it square to Edward on the left wing. He drove all the way into the D, effortlessly avoiding defenders as he went. He then pushed it to Sewelly, who tucked the ball into the goal all wrapped up behind the opponents goalkeeper. The final score was 2-1.

For the B's, however, the game was a completely different story. The St Faiths B's won 4-3, lust edging their opponents. It could have been, 3-2, however, because 2 of the goals were amazingly fluky. The first one, which we scored, had Luke pushing the ball towards the goal in a terrible attempt of a cross. The St Johns goalie ran out to boot the ball away, only to slip, allowing the ball to harmlessly roll across the goal-line. It was so slow I don't think it even touched the back of the goal. The second one, at the other end of the pitch, was a decent shot from a St Johns player. Our GK, Tom, dived to get it but missed. Fortunately, the ball hit the post. Unfortunately, the ball deflected off Tom's back and rolled on in. At least the B's still won.

St. Faith's vs Gresham's

Well, coming into the match, we weren't all that confident about winning, because Gresham's are good at every sport there is to play, but we were definitely not prepared for the number of goals that they sneaked behind our GK. The end result was 7 to 2. However, if we had only played the second half for the whole game, the game would have been 2 all, so we did much better in the 2nd half than in the 1st.

Our two goals were scored by firstly... actually, I'm not quite sure who tapped that one in. There was a mad scramble of sticks and someone managed to tap the ball into the goal. The second goal was after a lovely ball by Lewis (he was the man of the match) to Edward, who shot and scored.

St. Faiths v Culford

Relatively, this hockey match was uneventful, and the workrate of both sides, most especially St. Faiths, was very low. However, there were quite a few chances for both sides, and only one managed to get behind a goalkeeper's feet. Unfortunately, that goalkeeper was ours. Our coach told us that Culford deserved to win, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Very early on in the match, our right winger Luke blasted a cross through the Culford defense to me, but I wasn't very well positioned, I must admit, and tapped it wide. Later on, this time at the other end of the Astro turf, the Culford winger crossed it , and the receiver managed the tricky reverse-stick hit to deflect the ball in. Unlike most goals, our hopes - or at least my hopes weren't down.

In the second 15 minutes or so of the game, there were some pretty scary moments on both sides. At one point, an attacker of theirs somehow managed to fake out two of our men into a breakaway, but eventually, St. Faiths cleared it away.

Another time, Luke was taking a free hit from just outside the D (the shooting area) on the right-hand side. There was a pretty large opportunity for St. Faiths to score. I wasn't being marked, and there was a narrow gap for Luke to smack the ball through. I did what our coach told me to do after I missed a cross the first time. Stay low and sideways on to the goal. Luke saw me and hit the ball. He was very, very unlucky and the ball went out of bounds across the goal line.

In the very last minute, Luke saw John, our left winger, open in the D. He crossed it on the run - in bounds this time - but John stumbled a bit, and there was a mad scramble for the ball, but Culford - I honestly don't know how - managed to clear the ball away, securing their hopes of a shutout win.

St. Faiths vs. Bedford (hockey)

I was extremely nervous before this match. It was my first ever hockey match for the A's against the team that were supposed to be undefeated in rugby.

Our hopes were down when Bedford scored the first goal of the game. Their left wing managed to sneak the ball past two of our defenders, crossing it so that their right wing could deflect it in the net, giving no mercy to our helpless goalie. However, our centre-half and -forward managed to sneak in 1 goal each to make the score 2-1 at halftime.

The second half was almost completely uneventful, the ball somehow getting to every square centimeter on the pitch, except behind the goalkeeper. Except for one thing. Bedford were awarded a short corner, and I was supposed to charge down the person receiving the ball so he couldn't shoot, as I was the fastest. So I charged at him, but he still shot it, rather than trying to maneuver his way around me. The ball deflected off my stick and straight into my forehead, and my trusty sports goggles protected my eyes for being hit.

At the end of the game, I got ice and put it on my forehead to stop the swelling while I watched the B's team play. Well, my injury wasn't the best end to the day, but at least we won.

Hockey

This would be the second new sport that I will have learned. First rugby, and now this. Soon to come in the summer term will be cricket. Anyway, I have found my 3 1/2 hours of hockey training so far very enjoyable. I am surprised to notice that when I am finished, I'm hardly tired at all, but my legs are seriously sore. With rugby, it was the other way round.

I have a hunch that I won't improve as quickly as I did in rugby, or improve as much I did in rugby, but I will try. It seems like it's a pretty fun sport so far.