Sapphire Round 4 was the final round of the tournament and the Valkyries were drawn against two very tough teams to close out the season. First up was the divisional leaders, Teesside, followed by the hard hitting Sandwell.
Having played both of these teams in rounds one and two, the team knew to expect high intensity and physically demanding games – and they were not wrong.
So that is the end of Sapphire 2017. It went by so fast – too fast. Way too fast.
Looking back at the four rounds, they have to be some of my most enjoyable coaching moments. The amount of energy and enthusiasm on the sidelines is infectious. Everyone is completely into the game. Always looking to the next play, how they can get better, how they can succeed. There is never a negative moment. They never have their heads down – it is always looking forward and that just makes them so much fun to coach.
There have been some great moments through the tournament…
On Saturday 25th March, the Valkyries descended on Oxford for BAFA Sapphire Series 2017. Our coach
takes us through the MVPs for round 3.
Though we had a fun warm-up to Taylor Swift’s “Shake it off” (courtesy of Chester Romans we believe), we knew before we even started the games that these two teams would be tough. We have seen these women in action; they hit and run with a lot of power, and have the experience that we just don’t have. Unfortunately we lost to both teams, but nevertheless we scored in both games and continued our streak of scoring in every single game, and learned some new things along the way. With their experience level in mind, scoring against them is certainly a massive achievement in itself.
Nerves and excitement were definitely present with the Valkyries even days before the opening of Sapphire Series took place. Had we trained enough? Do we know enough? Especially for the rookies who had only 6 hours of training, there were questions as to how the day was going to go. And it turns out, we did brilliantly! We had far surpassed the expectations that we held against ourselves in both games; Winning our first game against another newly formed team Staffordshire Surge, and holding back an experienced team in the league, Sandwell Steelers, from overwhelming us on the scoring board. One win, one loss, but a hell of a lot of experience to take into the next round.
Read more “The Valkyries’ First Contact Tournament – Sapphire Series 2017”
