On a warmish June winter morning, the SPAR Schoolgirls Hockey organisers for the Gauteng area made their way South. Vanderbijlpark was hosting their the third edition of the SPAR Schoolgirls Hockey Festival and tthe Curro Vanderbijlpark School astro was hosting it’s first festival sponsored by SPAR.
The recently opened school has a brand new sand-based astro which means there would be no watering breaks commonly associated with the traditional water based astros.
Curro Vanderbijlpark hosted 6 schools on the 2nd of June: HS Carel de Wet, HS Transvalia,HS Drie Hoek, HS Dinamika, HS EG Jansen and HS Overvaal. The seventh school had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness among the players.
Our usual 14 match format was reduced to 11 games with a running clock. The matches in the 3 team pool and the finals being extended by a few minutes to keep the day’s schedule on track and allow the teams in the 4 team pool adequate rest between fixtures.

The four teams to progess from the pool stages were HS Dinamika, HS Overvaal, HS Transvalia and the hosts Curro Vanderbijlpark. Our format means the Pool winners face each other in the trophy match and the two second placed teams play against each other in the warm-up for the final.
In this edition, HS Transvalia played Curro in the build-up to the final putting the hosts to the sword and playing expansive fast paced hockey.
In the Final, HS Dinamika overcame HS Overvaal to deservedly win the SPAR Schoolgirls Hockey Challenge trophy.
A special thank you to Curro Vanderbijlpark for hosting us, Supersport Schools for the live broadcast from the astro, Spar for sponsoring the day and providing goodie bags for all the players, coaches and support staff and Josie Milella, our MC, Tech Table and everything else behind the scenes person.
Next, we will be at Kingsmead High School in Rosebank.