The victorious Whanganui women with their Manawatū Women's Premier Reserve hockey trophy. Photo / Supplied
They did it.
The Whanganui women beat High School Hockey Club Evergreens on Saturday to become the Manawatū Women's Premier Reserve hockey champions.
And it was convincing.
When the final whistle blew in Palmerston North, the scoreboard read 5-0 and the Whanganui women celebrated a season of domination.
Player/coach Colleen Baylis heaped praise on her teammates.
"Our midfield were able to control the game well and talk to our junior players a lot and that really helped them," Baylis said.
"It was our junior players that stepped up and really destroyed them with their speed."
Heading into the final, the Whanganui women had only lost one game and that was a 1-0 loss to Evergreens in May.
However, they returned fire with authority and crushed Evergreens 3-0 earlier this month.
Baylis said that the first half was "a little bit hairy".
"Evergreens came out really hard, they denied us a lot of the space that we ordinarily have and because we haven't really experienced that, we struggled with it.
"They had a lot of goal-scoring opportunities which went unconverted. If they'd scored in that first half, it could have been a different game."
Instead, it was the Whanganui women that got on the board between the 10th and 15th minute, but to the credit of Evergreens, that remained the scoreline at half time.
"We muddled through that first half. We were able to regroup at half time. It gave us an opportunity to settle down and have a chat about things," Baylis said.
"I just told our players to keep their composure on the ball. We were trying to do things too quickly and they marked a couple of our players quite hard."
Evergreens tried to continue implementing their gameplan of marking hard and restricting space, but five or 10 minutes into the second half they gave up another goal.
And the floodgates opened.
The Whanganui women put three more on the board before Evergreens were put out of their misery.
The scorers were Charlotte Baker, Kate Tylee, Melissa Goff-Hylton, Sophie Redmayne and Georgia Matson.
The young guns, Redmayne and Matson, were standouts for Baylis.
"They found the space easier to handle in the second half and took their opportunities, which sometimes they were a bit hesitant to do in the season," she said. "It was good to see them stand up."
Baylis said she had spent the last couple of days reflecting on the season.
"It was a weird feeling, I think we got to the end of the game and went 'Oh we won, okay that's cool, let's move on'.
"Having finished on top of the table, I think we knew that we should have won it and it would have definitely been a different feeling if we hadn't."
The Whanganui women went into the final having scored a remarkable 73 goals on the season, at an average of six per game.
On the flipside, they had only been scored against 15 times, which was just a tad over one goal scored on them a game.
"Evergreens had quite a good season. I always like playing against them and I was glad to play them in the final because it was a nice game and a nice atmosphere," Baylis said.
"It has been a standout season for us. It was a good team effort. We've only been together for three years and I think this one has probably been the best."
'We do our best but we are in extremely difficult times.'