KE Handball Girls go down to KR

Pubz Comm Reporter: Anand Vasudevan

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The first prelim match for the handball girls was against tough opponents, the blue KR warriors, and despite a strong effort, we lost 3-10.

The first half began with Kent Ridge taking the offensive quickly with a brace of shots and suddenly we found ourselves to be at 0-3. It took some time for the girls to catch up with the fast pace of the game played by Kent Ridge players but slowly we got back into the game with a few shots at the goal. Brenda opened the scoring for KE with a well directed shot and we pulled one back to bring the score 1-3.

Kent Ridge girls kept up the pace throughout the game, which caused Kimberly to concede a penalty (she was also given a time-out of 2 minutes). Luckily, our goalkeeper, Jia Hui pulled off a great save to deny our opponents the happiness of scoring again. We built a rhythm with a string of passes but we could not put the finishing touch with our shots being blocked by the defense and goalkeeper. Kent Ridge played aggressively, capitalizing on quick counterattacks to score at regular intervals and the first half ended 1-7.

The half-time talk concentrated on our mistakes, with suggested solutions to try to claw our way back into the game. The second half began on a positive note as we took to offense, firing a few rapid shots, thus forcing Kent Ridge’s goalkeeper to make good saves. One of Kimberly’s shot hit the top right post but unfortunately bounced up. In defense, we were much improved in holding Kent Ridge down with good saves from our goalkeeper. However, our opponents proved quite strong and we let slip in two more goals to bring the score to 1-9. As one of our supporters mentioned “KR is playing very fast and very aggressive”, stifling our players with clamps (a handball term to denote preventing the opponent from shooting with their arms enclosing the opponent). This caused our players to take shots farther away from the goal post than they would have preferred, reducing the chances of scoring.

But, our girls fought on and were able to score two more goals, one from Brenda and the other from Fang Chee, raising our morale and spirits. The game was approaching its end and the Kent Ridge team managed to score another goal, bringing the final score to read 3-10.

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Despite the result, there were some positives in the match and hopefully the girls can regroup for their second match against Eusoff, for a chance to qualify for the semi-finals.