Rugby, netball and tennis tournament in Beijing

During the half term break, 52 pupils from years 5 to 10 travelled to Beijing to compete in the 2017 rugby, netball and tennis tournament hosted by Dulwich College. We took an U11 and U13 netball team, U11 and U13 rugby team and a squad of ten tennis players to compete against some of the top schools from China, South Korea, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore. Over the course of two days marked by glorious weather, our teams battled well and represented the College in excellent fashion, demonstrated by the awards of sportsmanship for both our U11 rugby and U13 netball teams. In the tennis, our squad fought hard in what was their first tournament outside of Shanghai. Hoy and Maggie won earlier matches, but it was not enough to get through to the play-offs. Our U11 boys rugby team managed three wins in the group phase against DCB, NLC Jeju and DCSZ but lost the 3/4 play-off against DCS in the cup. Tries were shared around but Max and Aaron were the top scorers. The U11 girls netball started with a defeat to a very strong AISHK team and improved as the tournament progressed. Seren was top scorer overall with five goals, closely followed by Theresa with four. Their hard work was vindicated with a 3rd place finish, beating DCB 3-0, which was a great reversal of the previous 2-5 defeat. The U13 boys won their first match of the group phase with a convincing 8-0 victory over Harrow Beijing, with Sam getting four tries. However, their next two games ended in defeat. Into the plate competition, the boys went on to beat Western Academy and British School Beijing with Tommaso, Sam and Daniel scoring the bulk of the tries, but then lost their final match against DC Singapore. The U13 girls netball started with victory over Harrow at 5-1, with Sophie and Ruby providing the goals. The girls continued to get better as a team and really benefited from the experience, culminating with a closely fought 5-4 defeat against DCS, with Sophie and Ruby again the scorers throughout. Overall, it was a great experience for our pupils and it will no doubt give them the necessary motivation to do even better next year.