Hawaii Finals for North Harbour U16 Girls and Boys

The final day of the Hawaiian Invitational started with the skies covered in cloud and rain coming down quite heavily. It made the day humid and very warm for our players who were about to compete for the last time at the Punahou Pool.

The girls were in the final and were playing Stella Maris who are from Australia – a well drilled team with many players who had just competed in the Pan Pacific Youth series in Auckland New Zealand.

The girls started off missing a counter and saw number 10 from Stella Maris shoot from outside 5 metres. The girls from Harbour were totally focused on this game after a great talk with coach Payne the night before and some team bonding that morning. They worked well and continued to pressure the team from Australia to lead 5-3 at half time. The Harbour girls are a mixture of three teams and it was fantastic to see the complete team work – everyone working together to attain the goal they had set for themselves. At the end of the third quarter our Harbour girls were up 8-5 and continued to strive for greatness by taking the game 9-5.

Huge thanks to Matt Payne, Chelsea Geary and Lee Parlane who have kept these girls together over the past 8 days, ensured they had adequate food, lots of rest and sleep and were in the right mind set to take the title for 2016.

Congratulations also to Caitlin Howarth Dawson for being named MVP.

Our boys team have had some really tough competition as well and had made it through to the bronze medal match against Coronado. During the week the boys had found it hard to adjust to the old rules that USA play with. They had played a couple of fantastic games where it had all come together so today they were hopeful for a good game. The boys from Coronado are slightly older than our team and at the end of the day this made a difference. Our boys just couldn’t secure the vital goals when required. There were a few great goals scored by our boys from Harbour but they couldn’t quite make it on the day and went down to the boys from California. Although they couldn’t make this game a win the boys have improved throughout the tournament and should be proud of their achievements. Big call out to Megan Brown and Davor Carevic along with assistant coach Chelsea Geary who stepped in to assist throughout the tournament.

Overall a very successful tournament for all our players. It is fantastic that the club continues to offer more events like this for our club members. All the competitors felt they learnt so much as well as having a fantastic time in Hawaii. Look out North Harbour we are bringing home the title for U16 Girls and 4^th for the boys.