Penultimate round of VE U18 competition. We are hosting at Woodchurch. four teams in top NW pool.

Venue: Woodchurch HS

Times: 10.00am to 4.00pm

Pool C: St Bees A, Urmston Grammar, Newecastle Staffs A, Wirral

Team: U18s. Katie Leppington (c), Helena Hinch, Yanxi Chen, Imi Newall, Kaitlin Ha, Abi Larway, Lily Prosser, Liv Stewart, Gaby Liu

Results: Wirral v St Bees 2-0, 25-12, 25-14. Wirral v Newcastle Staffs 2-0, 25-15, 25-10, Wirral v Urmston 0-2, 20-25, 17-25.

First a big thank you to Lauren Coulter who came along to help run the competition and take on some of the refereeing responsibilities. We all appreciate it.

With Eisha and Lily missing and Gaby coming in for the first time we had to simplify our system and rotation but our girls adapted and performed really well. It was no surprise that we beat an inexperienced St Bees team - who’d travelled down from Cumbria - but, after we’d struggled against Newcastle sides in rounds 1 and 2 it was great to see our girls take the game by the scruff of the neck and simply serve ‘Castle off the court. Abi, Liv, Gaby and Lily all had strong runs of serve and the Newcastle players just couldn’t cope.

As we expected Urmston were an entirely different proposition. They still struggled against our strong serve, and if Abi had managed to continue a great run of serves in the first set the result could have been different, but, realistically Urmston were the better team. Their first ball (when they could return serve) was of a much higher standard than ours, they covered the court well, put together some nice attacking moves, and surprised us with the strength of their block. Katie played up to her captains role, hardly missing an attack and rescuing a lot of less than perfect sets with clever pokes and roll-overs. Gaby, considering her youth and in her first outing with the team did a good job as second setter, served with some venom and even hit a couple of winning spikes.

All in all this was a very encouraging performance, clearly established Wirral as the number two team in the North West and gave us a great basis to build on for the final round of the competition in March.