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Kangaros Netball Grabs 3rd Place in Six-Team AGAPE Tournament in Atlanta

submitted by: Alan Denton (Atlanta, GA)

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The Nashville Kangaroos Netball Club has just returned from their first tournament of the year, following on from their successful season of Winter netball. Like many enjoyable tournaments, this one started with the obligatory team bonding and tactics session, aka the road trip down to Atlanta. The wonderful people at Corporate Flight Management (CFM) were loath to lend us one of their corporate jets (we are still hopefull for the future), but were able to assist in letting us borrow their van for the weekend, and the team headed down on Friday afternoon, to be ready for the early start on Saturday down in Atlanta. As with all road trips, what goes on tour, stays on tour, but it is fair to say that we spent far more time discussing profiles on internet dating sites than we did discussing tactics or arguing on the finer rules of netball.

We arrived in Atlanta about midnight, and after finding out that our two non-smoking double rooms had in fact been mysteriously transformed into 1 smoking double and a single with a fold-out couch, we hit the sack to prepare for our day ahead.

The tournament was scheduled to start at 8:30am, but in keeping with the Caribbean feel of the teams participating, the organisers followed a much more relaxed schedule, getting underway at about 9:30 instead. There were six teams participating, with MINC (Manhatten International Netball Club) from New York, four teams from Atlanta (Crusaders ATL, Atlanta Stars, Agape Sports Club, and Gems) and ourselves. The tournament followed a round-robin format, with five games for all teams, each game comprising two 10 minute halves.

Our first game was against Agape (the hosts) and after an even first half we were able to sneak away in the second half and convert a couple of interceptions from Rachel "Elbows" Charlize, ending up the winners 15-11.

Our second game was also a very close afair. We were lucky to lead the Gems at halftime by a couple of points, and we extended that in the second half to eventually win 15-10. A great game from Taijana "Speedy Gonzales" Logsdon created space in the midfield we were able to capitalize on, and convert our possession into goals.

We had a quick turn-around to our third game, and our lack of substitutes plus our inability to match some Jamaican flair saw us come up short, a very slow start and a lack of drive meaning we were behind at half-time. We kept our own in the second half, some harsh words from Moreen "I'm The Coach" Logsdon ringing in our ears, but the full-time score was a 23-12 loss to the Atlanta Crusaders (the eventual tournament winners).

We used the long break to our next game to refuel and discuss tactics. Unfortunately we again failed to start well against MINC, their superior speed and defensive efforts thwarting our enthusiasm and our shooter Alan "Dead-eye Dick" Denton. That pattern was repeated in the second half despite the best efforts of Fiona "No Steps" Harrison in defence, the end result being a 13-3 loss to the tournament runners-up. Ouch.

Regrouping and ending the tournament on a positive note become our primary motivation for our final game, the last game of the tournament. With our supporters back in the grandstand and some positional changes, we started well against the Atlanta Stars, a very physical team, with Bina "Fast Hands" Patel providing great ball movement through the final third to our shooters. We backed that up in the second half with some excellent interceptions from Jerome "Air Jordan" Reece and despite some nerves we held on to win 18-15.

Three wins from five games was a fantastic outcome for a team that played with no substitutes, no practice time, and with one of our players having their first ever games of netball and another returning from some injury-enforced time away from the game. The team played with the right attitude, great sportsmanship, played hard and fair and never gave up, and our result was good enough for third place in the tournament.

The team then enjoyed a quiet evening, with most of us enjoying a great Thai dinner and a few quiets before we carried our aching bodies back to the hotel. We finished on Sunday with the return trip through the rain back to Nashville.

Many thanks to:

The Netball Club is looking forward to the next season of netball starting in May - we hope to see many of you participating or supporting the players.