1st hockey team on track to retain county title

The 1st XI hockey team travelled to Queenswood last Saturday for the group stages of the county U18 tournament.

Haileybury completely dominated their group with wins over St Clement Dane, Herts & Essex HS, Dame Alice Owen and Presdales. Vicky Hewett in goal touched the ball once in four games, which shows the measure of Haileybury’s domination. Out of the four games, three were won and one drawn. There were goals from Amber Banbury, Molly Pallett and an outstanding deflection from Olivia Chase. The team are looking forward to the semi-finals and final on Thursday 14 October, where they expect to retain the trophy they won last year.

That afternoon the 1st XI went on to record a comfortable 3-0 win over Uppingham. In a fast-flowing and competitive game, Haileybury were outstanding, defensively restricting a strong Uppingham team to only a handful of chances. Ashley Coe opened the scoring with a strike from the top of the D towards the end of the first half. The second goal was the culmination of a fantastic passing movement starting deep in the Haileybury half, which cut Uppingham apart and left Molly Pallett with a tap in on the lefty post. Amber Banbury completed the scoring with the third from a goalmouth scramble. Haileybury were unlucky not to get a fourth when a clever deflection from Amber was saved by a defender’s body on the line.

In an excellent team performance, Fran Burn was outstanding, dominating the hard-fought mid-field battle and Lisa Hunt, Lindsey El-Beih and Roz Brennan completely outclassed some talented Uppingham forwards with a determined defensive display.