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On Tuesday 26 April, this time it was the turn of the boys to represent Wellington College at the U14 boys’ national finals, the first boys’ team to make the national stages of the competition in over 30 years. The competition was again being held at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with the hockey played at the Lee Valley Hockey Centre.
Wellington’s first group stage match was against Yarm School; the boys had a shaky start and soon found themselves 1-0 down early on. After composing themselves and finding some confidence and rhythm, they grew into the game. An evenly contested first half ended with Dylan H calmly slotting the ball into the goal after dribbling around the keeper. The boys came out roaring after the half-time break and Luca C scored a delightful deflection goal, with the ball flying into the top corner off his reverse stick and later Carter D finished off a well-worked move to give the boys a 3-1 victory in their first game.
In game two against The Perse the boys started superbly and won a penalty corner in the second minute; the rebound was taken by Jacob P and the boys were ahead. The Perse battled back hard and scored two goals in quick succession to give them the lead. Dylan then scored his second goal of the day levelling the score at half-time. After the break, The Perse managed to score again and despite a valiant effort from the boys, they couldn’t get an equaliser and lost 3-2.
The final group game was against tournament favourites Whitgift. The boys went 1-0 down after 5 minutes but then battled hard; both teams had chances and it was a well-contested game. However, Whitgift ran away with it in the later stages scoring 3 goals in the last 5 minutes to win 4-0.
This left Wellington playing in the 5th and 6th playoff against Repton. A poor start to this game meant the boys found themselves 2-0 down. However, the boys continued to show heart and courage and got the score back to 2-1 by half-time. The second half was a gripping contest and in the last minute of the game Henrik W scored a superb goal to take the game to penalties. Unfortunately, Repton scored all of their penalties as Wellington missed two. This confirmed a 6th place finish.
The team’s coach Mr Farrington commented:
“A tremendous effort from the boys. Having come together as a squad in January and four months later finish 6th in the country is a fantastic achievement. A massive thank you to Mr Liang and Mr Joy for all their efforts with the boys. This is such an exciting group, with exciting potential, it will be very exciting to see how they progress and develop.”
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