Hockey under-18 girls give their coach the best possible send-off

Wairarapa gave their coach Richard Fenwick a memorable swansong when they placed third at the national under-18 women's hockey tournament in Dunedin last week.
Fenwick is due to move to Hastings in three weeks, a shift which will mean the end of a seven-year involvement with Wairarapa representative hockey teams.
The first four of those were with the Hatch Cup primary schoolboys side and the last three have been with the under-18 women
For the latter this was their best result under the guidance of Fenwick and a continuation of their significant improvement from 14th in 2004 to fourth a year later.
And it was an effort which justified Fenwick's pre-tournament prediction that his side were again capable of making it through to the semi-finals.
"I guess a lot of people thought that having finished fourth last year we could only go backwards this time round so it speaks volumes for the girls that they managed to do even better," Fenwick said.
"But the talent was always there to do it?it was just a matter of getting consistency into their play and after a couple of hiccups early on we did that."
Wairarapa's most important win in pool play was the 3-1 defeat of previously unbeaten Northland in their last game as anything other than a win there would have seen them playing off for between ninth and 16th.
Then followed a nail-biting 2-1quarter-final victory over a tenacious Southland side before they fronted up to the might of Auckland in the semis.
Auckland , a team which included no fewer than 10 national age group reps and which went on to beat Northland in the final,, defeated Wairarapa 4-1 with Fenwick having no excuses whatsoever for the loss.
"They (Auckland) were just much too good?they were slick and well organised," he said.
"They had three goals on us at halftime and it was an uphill battle from there. But we scored as many goals as them in the second spell and that was special in itself."
That result left Wairarapa playing off for third and fourth with Canterbury and a Karla Burt first half goal ended up being the only scoring action in the whole game.
"It was pretty tight with most of the play in the middle of the pitch but I think the one goal advantage to us was fair enough on the way the game went" Fenwick said.
"We had at least one other really good opportunity to score and I can't recall Canterbury even having a decent shot at goal."
Fenwick believes Wairarapa's strong showing came through their ability to perform as a team rather than as a group of individuals.
"There were probably three or four sides who had any amount of players with better technical skills but most of them didn't have the same unity as us," Fenwick said.
Particularly outstanding amongst the Wairarapa forwards was Wendy Hull while Taasha Henson starred in the halfline and Kelly Browne did likewise in the defence.
Just how many of the current Wairarapa aisde will be available against next year is not clear but at least six will be missing, and possibly another couple as well.
However, Fenwick is still confident that whoever has charge of the side then will have a competitive side in the very top echelons of competition