On Sunday 9th June, the West Bridgford School Year 10 boys and girls handball teams made the short trip to David Ross Sports Village, University of Nottingham for the National Finals of the England Handball National School’s Competition.
This was familiar territory for the boys who had previous experience on this stage having finished second in 2022 and third playing up a year in 2023, so expectations were high.
The girls had qualified for the first time and were looking forward to testing themselves at the next level. Both teams had qualified as Regional Champions earlier in the year although they knew this would be another step up in amongst the top 10 teams in the country.
Having not played for a while the boys were slightly sluggish in their opener against Aylesbury Grammar, although still did enough to claim a 7-4 win. The girls then started their campaign against Aylesbury High and it was a difficult game against a really tall, physical side and we unfortunately lost 5-2.
The boys then went through the gears against Brampton Manor and St Michael’s, winning the games 10-6 and 7-2 respectively, to secure themselves a semi-final spot with one game to play.
Next up for the girls they faced Harris City Academy, in what was another physical game. Once again, the girls battled hard but were undone by a couple of bits of quality and were on the wrong side of a 3-0 score line.
This left us in a difficult position as we now knew we’d have to win both of our final games to stand any chance of qualifying. The penultimate game against Manchester High School for Girls was arguably their best performance of the day, which was impressive against a team full of players who play outside of school and eventually finished 3rd in the tournament. The team were well in the game for long periods until Manchester stretched out into a small lead towards the end and beat us 6-4. This was the end of our chances and the final game against Pate’s was then all about trying to get a win on the board and finishing well. Unfortunately, this followed a similar pattern to the previous games and we finished with a 5-1 loss. The girls can be really proud of their achievement this year in reaching the National Finals, they have worked extremely hard in training to get to this point and a number of them are now pursuing playing handball outside of school which is fantastic to see!
The boys final group game was against Ercall Wood, who had also won all 3 games to this point, therefore setting up a group decider against ourselves. Once again, the boys performed brilliantly and cruised into an early lead and from then on controlled the game really well, winning 8-1 and topping the group in the process.
This set up a semi-final against King’s Academy, Liverpool. The boys were confident after their previous performances and this showed as they were very aggressive in defence and constantly creating chances at the other end with some free-flowing handball. The resulted in a comfortable 7-2 win and passage through to the final.
The final saw us up against Ercall Wood for the second time on the day. The boys continued how they had for the whole tournament and once again put in a phenomenal display at both ends of the court, flying into a lead early on and never looking back. The game ended 12-7 in our favour to crown the boys National Champions for 2024. This means that the boys have scored an incredible 139 goals and conceded just 38 on their way to title this year, and it is testament to how strong the squad is that all of the boys in the squad have scored multiple goals along the way. Congratulations to all the boys on an amazing achievement, fully deserved for their performance on the day and for all their hard work over the last three years, they can be extremely proud of themselves!
We must also mention Guillaume Eprinchard, who has given up his own time to work with both the boys and girls teams this year every Thursday and Friday morning before school and has really taken them all to the next level. He has also given them opportunities to play handball away from school and both teams were lucky enough to be asked to represent Nottinghamshire at a tournament earlier in the year, whilst some are now pursuing playing for clubs and regional academies as a result of this.