First Lacrosse Captains, Emma and Karina, Reflect on the National Schools Lacrosse Championship

Moreton Senior Sport

Our first day at Nationals started grandly, battling our nerves and after a lovely premier inn full English breakfast, we headed over to the Aldershot pitches. On Saturday, we faced St Mary’s Calne, Benenden, Bedford, St Barts, and Canford. An 8-0 Win vs Canford started our day off very well followed by a 4-1 win vs Bedford, a 5-1 win vs Benenden, a 9-2 win vs St. Barts and our last game of the day was a nail-biting decider for the top of our group vs St Mary’s Calne that ended in our final win of the day at 3-2 to us. This meant that as we had topped our group we were through to the championship group with the other top sixteen schools in England!!

Day two began much like the first, but with understandably, more nerves. We arrived at the fields and began the day with level heads, taking each game as it came. Unfortunately, we started the second day with two subs instead of three due to an unfortunate spell of food poisoning from Karina, nevertheless, we faced the day head-on and battled through until Karina rejoined us before our third game. Our first two games were against Marlborough and Wycombe Abbey. A convincing 5-0 win vs Marlborough preceded our 1-1 draw vs Wycombe Abbey. For our last game of the group stages, we faced a very skillful Westonbirt, but back with a full team and a full bench of all three subs we battled and finished 3-0 and placed top of our group. At our first round of the knockouts stage, we faced Downe House and after being down in the first half we pulled it back and won 4-2.

At this point, we had reached the top eight and were to face Queen Anne’s Caversham in the quarter-finals. Again after going down 3-1 in the first half with some lovely team play and attacking prestige, we won 4-3 but this was where things really intensified for us. Our semi-final rolled around and what did you know it was revenge time against St Cats who beat us in the finals last year. We made it our mission to not let the same thing happen. We would like to take this time to apologise to Mrs Walsh and Mrs Lewin for the heart failure they experienced throughout the day as we let in a couple of goals early on in the games and guess what this semi-final was no different. Again, we went 2-0 down but with a mixture of anger, revenge and a sprinkling of Moreton magic in the second half we defeated the reigning National Champions St Catharines to win 4-2 and secured our place in the National Final for the second year in a row.

Knowing we’d made it to the finals against Godolopin was a whirlwind of pure elation and excitement. After our pre-game ritual of Pitbull’s ‘Fireball‘, we stepped onto the pitch for our final game together. We were filled with nerves and excitement as we knew that the next sixteen minutes were what we’d spent the last seven months preparing for, all the hours training in horizontal rain in near darkness on our AstroTurf came down to this.

In true Moreton fashion, and carrying on our apparent theme of the day, we were 2-1 down after the first half, this did not matter however as every single one of us on that pitch knew that we were not coming back on the bus with another silver medal. Tension grew in the second half but each goal we scored brought us one step closer to victory. The final seconds of the game seemed to slow down as we held on to our lead, and as the final whistle sounded, a wave of excitement swept over us. We threw our sticks up and ran to celebrate with our team, Mrs Lewin and Mrs Walsh and our blue hatted parents who were by far the best-dressed supporters there!

The sense of accomplishment and pride we felt was overwhelming, knowing that we, a little school from Shropshire, were now the National Champions. It was a moment that we all will remember and cherish forever and ever. No words will ever be able to put into perspective how it truly felt in that moment. As a team, we worked tirelessly all season for that very moment, and seeing our hard work and dedication pay off was an indescribable feeling. The cherry on the cake after our long journey back up north was being greeted by everyone off the bus to a guard of honour and a chorus of ‘We are the Champions.’ I think that moment sums up the magic that is Moreton Hall, our crazy school that came together tremendously to celebrate a win that was not just for our team of thirteen but a win for everyone past and present who is lucky to call themselves a Moretonian.