Story courtesy of College Sport Media

Tawa College’s Senior A netball team has been on a tear since Winter Tournament Week at the end of last August.

That’s when they finished fourth at the annual Lower North Island Secondary School (LNISS) tournament to qualify for the New Zealand Secondary School Nationals in October, finishing a highly credible 10^th out of the best 16 netball teams in the country.

With about half the team returning to school in 2024, Tawa backed those results up last month by winning the annual College Sport Wellington pre-season tournament played at the Akau Tangi Sports Centre.

Tawa beat eight-time defending CSW RSSL champions St Mary’s College not once but twice on the day to take the spoils.

“We won both games by one goal, but honestly both could have gone either way,” said Tawa College’s Baylee Meroiti.

Year 12 centre/wing attack Baylee is the team’s co-captain along with year 13 goal attack/goal shoot Breearn Wilson.

This past Saturday, Baylee, Breearn and two other Tawa College players, year 13 goal shoot/goal attack Malia Leone and year 13 wing attack/centre Jaime Hokianga, were in the Kapi-Mana U18 team that won this past weekend’s opening representative tournament of the year in Masterton.

“We beat the top Wellington team by seven goals in our final round-robin and deciding match to win the Marj Jenden Tournament, and it was quite a shock to all of us,” said Baylee.

“We played seven [shortened to eight-minute quarters] games over two days and were unbeaten. We had a really close game against the other Wellington team – we only won that game by two goals, but we were down by five goals at the end of the third quarter and were able to finish well.” 

Rewinding to the middle of last year, and Tawa College were a Division 2 school in the CSW RSSL competition. They lost narrowly to Scots College in the final.

Moving on to the LNISS tournament, the top five schools of that tournament qualify for NZSS nationals, along with the leading six from the top half of the North Island and five from the South Island. Tawa was fourth – and a key result there was reversing that earlier loss to Scots College.

Baylee said that qualifying and attending Nationals was a proud achievement.

“It all surprised us in a good way. We didn’t know that we could step up to that level, but we proved that we could foot it with the big established netball schools and that was a big confidence booster.”

The experience of being at Nationals during that week in Auckland was a highlight for the team.

“Not being one of the schools that attends regularly, it was a really good experience for us and as first timers we weren’t too bothered on the results. Other than the netball, we were able to lots of team bonding and we had plenty of downtime between games to rest up and hang out as a team.”

Baylee’s mother, Rebecca Meroiti, is the Head Coach of the side and she said a big reason for the team’s success is the fact that many of the players have been playing together in school, club and representative teams for a few years and they have a strong understanding of each other’s games and strong connections through the court.

“A lot of us have been playing together for a few years now,” added Baylee, “and there is also no one star player, we all play for each other.”

Tawa College’s Senior A team is also playing in the Saturday club grade and is Premier 3 at the moment, along with Queen Margaret College and Samuel Marsden Collegiate, and with two grading games to go they are eyeing up promotion to Premier 2. 

The school’s overall netball programme is healthy, with nine teams in 2024 – Senior A, B and C, Junior A and five other lower grade/social sides.

Baylee is also one of four wider Wellington players and only one from Tawa College who in April were named in a 26-player NZSS training squad. There are more camps to come this year as this team gets reduced to a team that will play games towards the end of this year.

Baylee and Breearn were also selected in the Aotearoa Maori Secondary Schools squad, but Baylee is withdrawing from that squad owing to other commitments.

Baylee said most of Tawa’s Senior A netball team don’t play other sports – but she is an exception as she is a member of the Girls First XI cricket team that has qualified for Nationals at the end of this year.

This cricket team has a rich pedigree and currently has four former members in the New Zealand White Ferns, Sophie Devine, the Kerr sisters and Georgia Plimmer whom Baylee played with when she first made the team in year 9. Baylee is an opening batter and back-up wicketkeeper.

For now, the cricket season is a long way, and herself and her teammates are concentrating on another big season of netball that is just warming up.

They are not getting ahead of themselves, but odds-on they will qualify for Division 1 of the CSW RSSL league that starts up in a few weeks – and from there dare to dream that they can break St Mary’s steely grip on the title and win the silverware.

Article added: Thursday 13 June 2024