Milestone looms for Harcourts in premier netball competition

Harcourts will bring up a milestone when they score just their second goal in their Netball Wairarapa premier one match with St Matthews Collegiate at the Colombo road courts in Masterton tomorrow.
That will signal their 400th goal for the season, a remarkable record considering the first 398 have come in just six games. Even just a cursory glance at their results shows just how dominant Harcourts have been.
They kicked off with a commanding 75-22 victory over Hiona and have followed that with big wins over Greytown (83-25), Carterton Red (53-26), Kuranui College (73-15), Wairarapa College (64-26) and Gladstone All Blacks (50-22), the latter coming despite having no more than five players on the court at any one time because a suspension handed out to them for not providing umpires for an earlier club game.
Tomorrow it is St Matthews Collegiate's turn to face the Harcourts "machine" and with the college team likely to be depleted because of school commitments anything but another big Harcourts win would be a huge surprise.
In other premier one games,Hiona should have the edge on Kuranui College, Gladstone All Blacks could bounce back with a win over Wairarapa College and Carterton Red should beat Greytown. Meanwhile, on the representative front Wairarapa under-17s coach Robyn Schischka was pleased with the competitiveness of her team at a tournament in Palmerston North last weekend despite them losing all three of their games. With four St Matthew's Collegiate players missing Schischka was forced to turn to her reserve players to fill the gaps and she was delighted with the way they responded to the challenge.
"It was a really good test of our depth and I think we coped well in the circumstances,' she said.
Wairarapa trailed Hutt Valley 7-2 at the end of the first quarter in their opening game but had clawed their way back to 13-14 going into the last quarter. However, Hutt Valley finished slightly the stronger to win 22-18. Outstanding for Wairarapa were goal keep Rachel Mawson and goal defence Lisa Morriss.
Wing defence Alex Sinclair and Mawson then starred in the 24-8 loss to Manawatu development squad, a match in which Schischka tried a number of new combinations, and then followed a 21-14 loss to Taranaki after Wairarapa had actually led at halftime. Wing attack Maria Hodges had a strong game there.