Rachel Candy
23 Jan 2025
Canterbury U17 Girls hit Palmerston North for the unofficial National U17 Girls' Tournament...
The 2024/25 Season saw Canterbury Cricket get an Under 17 team to the unofficial National Tournament for the first time! Initially on-board as the Assistant Coach of this talented group, I took on the Head Coaching role just prior to the campaign starting.
A brief build up, interrupted by Christmas, and an early start at the airport landed our group in Palmerston North for 5 days of BEAUTIFUL weather and some excellent cricket matches. Our first day was filled with a short training, a picnic lunch and then some team building activities centred around our theme of NASA.
The cricket consisted of 3 x 30 over matches, 2 x T20 and a play off game that was shortened to 25 overs so we could catch our flight home. The group had a convincing win over Otago on the first day, wins in two extremely tight matches with Northern Districts and Central Districts, and were convincingly beaten by both Wellington and Auckland (who finished 1st and 2nd, respectively), as well as a loss in the play off for 3rd against CD.
The growth of this group was awesome to be part of, especially their game understanding and supporting their technical and tactical development and reflections.
The future of Canterbury Cricket looks bright with the young cricketers that are coming through and it was a privilege to be part of this Team.
