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.

St. Faiths vs. Spratton Hall

The first time we played Spratton Hall was in the Rugby 7's tournament. They beat us 21 to nil, which was an obliteration considering that the matches only lasted ten minutes, but it wasn't as bad as some of the other scores that other teams had got.

Anyway, the game started pretty well, to tell you the truth. Our coach said that our handling skills were very good on the left hand side as well as our tackling all around. We conceded two tries, which were both breakaways, but Mr. Will Zeitlyn helped St. Faiths fight back with a daredevil run down the left side. He always seems to score in every match that we play, win or not.

The second half proved to be just as good, conceding only one try which was just barely touched down because it seemed to be dropped, but the referee gave the try anyway. We were still consistent with quite a few boys claiming to have saved a try with a tackle. Our last rugby match of the season proved to be a good one, even though we were defeated. Next week we start our field hockey season.

Rugby 7's Tournament

Usually, St. Faiths plays rugby matches with 12 players on each side. However, we had a tournament on Sunday that was only 7 a side. Sevens is different from twelves in the fact that you do not want to lose the ball. The ball has a 200 pound note on it. As a result of this, there is no kicking game whatsoever because if chip the ball away, 9 times out of 10 you will have lost the ball! Also, since there are so few players, there is a lot of breakaways (as shown above). In fact, I scored a try from a breakaway, but I will get to that later.

Anyway, the first match was against our old rivals, Gresham's. They beat us four tries to nil, but they are such a high standard school that we thought no one could beat them. Most of us predicted that they would win the tournament.

Our next match right afterward was against Spratton Hall. I thought that it was funny, because we we are going to play them on Wednesday in 12's! Anyway, we lost by less than to Gresham's, but still a remarkable defeat at 2 tries to nil.

There was a two match break after Spratton, so our coach told us that we really needed to get on the scoreboard and stop being quite so nice to our opponents. Half of our wishes came true in our next match, against Wilthem Hall.

St. Faiths still lost (again) to Wilthem Hall, but only by a very small margin. They managed to squeeze in 3 tries in the 10 minutes we had for each match, but St. Faiths fought back with two, of which were scored by our two top try-scorers, Ed Fairey and Will Zeitlyn. We were still not being aggressive enough, and we took the ball into contact much, much too often, which would usually result in a turnover, even though we are very strong in our rucks and scrums.

Lunch was a cup of delicious vegetable soup based on chicken stock and a cookie. It was just the right thing to warm us up (it was freezing!) for our next match.

Since we came last in our group, we had to face the third-place team in the second group, Winchester House. If we won, we would compete for the plate, the second-best honor you could get in the tournament, but if we lost, we would have to fight out who came in seventh and eighth. I personally think that our match against Winchester House was the most exciting of the matches.

Winchester scored first, with a breakaway down the left-hand side. I was very close to tackling him, but he sidestepped away while I zipped past him hopelessly and he scored. Soon afterward, another player of Winchester House found a gap in our defense and took off down the left hand side. I was on the other side of the pitch, as I usually was, but I took off. As I approached him, I hoped he would not do a sidestep as well. That would make two missed tackles on my part in the same corner. Luckily for me, he didn't. He just glanced at me, and then sped up a little bit. I took a chance and hit him hard hard as I could. He went down about 1 yard from the try line. Phew. There was a series of plays dangerously close to our try line, but we cleared the ball away after a while. Just before the first half ended, however, Winchester scored a second try, again as a breakaway, just to try to make them on the upper hand.

The second half was just as suspending. About two minutes into it, our man got tackled but Tom Cox, our tight head prop, rucked over beautifully, presenting me the ball right in front of me. I took my chances , picked the ball up and zoomed away.

Early on in my run, I could hear thundering footsteps behind me, closing in. I am a pretty decnt sprinter, so I avoided them for the first 40 yards. I planned to place the ball in the corner of the try zone rather than diving, afraid that I would knock the wind out of myself. However, just as I was getting ready to put the ball down, I felt someone trying to shove my legs into touch to make a lineout. I dived for it.

It felt like my feet were out of bounds. Maybe they were. Maybe not. Anyway, I ended up with half of my legs in touch, the ball under my chest, waiting to hear what the ref would say. Did I score? Or was I out of bounds?

"Try given." The two words that suddenly mad my life a ton happier that it already was. It was my first try of the whole season for me. I was completely out of breath, but very glad with myself. Eventually we lost the game 3 tries to 2, but I was still pretty satisfied with my work.

For the next match, I rested the whole thing, even though my coach and I were planning for me to go on in the second half. However, we were doing so well that we did not make any replacements. St.Faiths won that match 21-7. We ended up as the second-worst team in the tournament, but at least we weren't last.

St. Faiths vs. Kings Ely (rugby)

Today we were really motivated to beat Kings Ely, firstly because Kings Cambridge had beaten us already and secondly because the season is coming to a close next week and we want to end it on a high note.

During the first part of the game, the ball must have traveled everywhere on the field except the try zone. Domination was going back and forth between the two teams. We were extremely dominant in rucks and scrums, but we conceded lots of penalties as well. However, one ruck that St. Faiths won proved to be fatal for Kings Ely because as soon as our fakey-fakey inside centre Ed Fairey received the ball, he did his business and gave us our first try.

The second half was the flower of our performance. Try #2 was scored by Will 'Lightnin' Zeitlyn, who, as soon as he saw a gasp in Kings Ely's defense, went straight for it. Nobody on St. Faiths was expecting this, so he had no support and 5 opponents on his tail. It seemed like milliseconds before he raced into the try zone, and just for the heck of it, he ran sideways to score under the posts. He seemed to have made his mark on that encounter, but he wanted more. He scored again, but that time he wasn't so sure about himself. He got tackled, but stretched his arms just enough to place the ball on the try line. King's Ely never underestimated him again. He even got the man of the match award after the game finished with a final score of 19-0 to St. Faiths. Guess what? It was even his birthday. What a lovely birthday present for him.

St. Faiths vs Bishop's Stortford

The first half of this match was an absolute blowout.Four times the offense of Bishop’s Stortford snuck through the gaps in our defense to score.We were deep in Bishop’s Stortford’s half until their offense got the ball and crept up the pitch, breakdown by breakdown, play by play.Finally, a ruck near our posts resulted in their blonde full-back diving into the try zone, capping the outstanding play off.However, our star inside centre Ed Fairey bravely blocked their attempted conversion with his hands.We could still pull in the lead if we tried hard.
Try Number Two resulted in poor tackling from St. Faiths, with one of their men driving the swarm of red and black jerseys surrounding him until the ball came to rest just right of the posts in the try zone.
The third try occurred when one of our men handled the ball in a ruck 5 meters from the posts.This gave Bishop’s Stortford a penalty in which their man dodged and fought his way 5 meters for the try.
The final try of the first half happened when their full back intercepted a pass down our back line and ran almost 70 meters.Our brilliant fly half Dominic Lea pursued him the whole time and just before the opposition scored again, he attempted a last-gasp dive but he didn’t quite reach Bishop’s Stortford’s man, who slid under the posts in a wild celebration.It wasn’t a great start to the first half, but we knew that the only way we could go was up.St. Faiths was definitely right about going up.We held Bishop's Stortford at 0-0 for almost the whole second half, with some close calls here and there. Then, at the last moment, we fumbled a pass in the try zone due to handling errors from both the passer and the receiver and many jerseys scrambled for the ball, but Bishop’s Stortford touched it down for the final try.

St. Faiths vs. Felsted

There had been a rugby tournament in October that St. Faiths had played, at a school called New Hall. We won our group matches, but guess who we lost to in the semifinals? Felsted. We were looking to get revenge from them, but unfortunately for us, we lost 2 tries to nil.

In the first half, Felsted dominated and scored a try, their lock pummeling through our defense to score. There was no real action other than the try, but we kept them at 7 points. At halftime, our coach said that the forwards needed to get to the rucks and the tackling needed to be better.

The halftime break seemed to be the spark for us. Our tackling was still iffy, but our forwards were getting to the rucks. However, Felsted still had the advantage over us in terms of possession and scored the winning try with one of their backs dodging our defense and running to score the concluding try.