Season Review
Hello korf lovers! Unfortunately its that time of year where we have to say goodbye to korfball until September. However, we've had quite the year haven't we. So whilst I procrastinate to the best of my abilities from doing revision here's a little round up of the season.
23rd September; it was a bright sunny day (rare I know) in Newcastle, yet the korfball crescendo was only just getting started. In amongst the freshers fair were Kerry and Blythe trying to sell korfball to the masses. However, as anyone who plays knows, how the hell do you explain korfball? If you say its mixed gender and a cross between netball and basketball once you've said it a million times. Their persistence paid off and from that fair emerged a korfball team.
5 weeks later and not only have we got a team, we actually half know what we're doing. Cue, our first tournament at Sheffield, just a small baptism of fire. Ten of us made the trip down and to be totally honest I can't remember much of what happened because the blog didn't exist. What I can say is, is that we weren't too shabby given we'd only heard of it 5 weeks before and so it looked like maybe we might actually be pretty good at this.
Roll on NEKA! For those of you not familiar, NEKA is the north east league consisting of teams from Northern Storm, Tyneside Titans, Northumbria Uni and Newcastle Uni. Now whilst our first couple of games in the league were not exactly ones for the history books they serve up some iconic moments. For instance myself and Ashley having some doubts about the rather exotic NEKA kit only to realise the guy who designed it was standing behind us. They would be valuable preparation for our BUCS and SKA cup fixtures.
The SKA cup was first which saw us head up to Edinburgh and whilst the tournament itself might have not been a particular success, we were up against some pretty good teams. Some we would later go on to beat but more about that later. The tournament did provide one of my favourite moments of the season though when we headed into Edinburgh afterwards for the christmas market accompanied by a karaoke session in the car home.
One week later and BUCS was here and we were bolstered by the addition of Wilbert. In #smashedit fashion we nailed prelims finishing a solid 4th and guaranteeing us a place in regionals.
After Christmas we returned to action with an EIKT cup debut and we were a bit short due to exams but we did ok all things considered. It seemed like we certainly did ourselves proud at the social afterwards anyway.
Off the pitch we also had some news with our founder Kerry stepping down as president and Hyun Gyu taking over the reigns. This coincided with the arrival of our shiny new kit!
We were meandering along quite nicely to be honest, those of us managing to get to training and play a lot were progressing rapidly. So when we got to regionals over at Lancaster we weren't really putting any limits on ourselves.What would be would be. Thankfully this turned out to be quite handy as after making a decent start against Strathclyde and narrowly missing out on wins against the other teams in our group we suffered from the early start quite a bit and didn't manage to really pick it back up until the end of the day against Manchester. As a result we ended up in the national plate but we did see the emergence of Kaptain Korf and her supreme baking skills so it was worth it.
Then we had the first ever korfball Stan Calvert fixture which we won 9-8! It also saw us make our live coverage debut courtesy of the Courier and started to spread the korf word across campus, with the #KorfballCrescendo beginning.
Between Stan Calvert and Nationals I can't really remember but we would have had fun anyway! So lets just cut to the chase and talk about BUCS again shall we. In case you somehow missed it, WE GOT SILVER! Who the hell saw that coming?! We rocked up to Manchester with our usual happy korfer whatever happens happens attitude and by the end of the first day, not only were we unbeaten ,we were certain of a top four finish. The next day we started off with a semi-final against UEA who we proceeded to appropriately dominate 13-8. Note for all the other teams, wearing suits doesn't help ;) This set up a final against Hallam, one of the most unpopular teams in the uni korf world, and we had beaten them in the group the day before. One win from gold the game ended 9-9. This meant we would finish the weekend as the only unbeaten team in match play but it would be down to penalties to decide the final result. Unfortunately we missed out on the win but we won ourselves a lot of friends and respect that weekend and whilst we were gutted at the time, its an achievement we can be incredibly proud of.
We returned after easter with only NEKA pride left to play for. Sadly it just wasn't our year in the league but hopefully with the exposure we've got from the games we can start next year with a proper second team (please, I need a rest, as the photo below accurately shows). However, there was the small matter of Harry scoring a spectacular own korf. Yes you read that right, and no Harry you are not going to live that down for some time.
Got all that? Good because now we only have the end of year awards left. Now I know we gave out a most improved player award but frankly this could have gone to a whole host of people. However here are the winners:
MVP Girl: Rebekah Albiston
MVP Boy: Hyun Gyu
Most improved player: joint between Lottie Rhodes and Chris Baker
Korf mom of the year: Blythe Day
Most dramatic fall: Wilbert den Hoed
Most likely to be cast as Bambi: Arturo Steinvorth
At this point I would like to give a massive shout out to Fran. Our coach all season you've always helped us out and gone above and beyond. You've turned us newbies from completely clueless to medal winners in 6 months. If that's not super coach territory I don't know what is!
Now for the sad part. As with all good things they must at some point come to an end and that is the case with some of our players this year. Jess, Morgan, Arturo, Wilbert; you will always be welcome back any day and please do as you will all be missed.
To everyone else, enjoy the summer and the rest. You've definitely earned it this year and there are more great things to come next year when NEKA becomes EKL affiliated and promotion becomes a thing.
Finally, to those of you who have got involved with the team this year, supported us, followed our progress and helped us develop. Thank you. We'll be back in October with a fresh batch of korfers and a load more games. If you'd like to keep up to date with our latest going ons we've added a subscribe function at the bottom of the website so that you can receive our monthly newsletter and the occasional big event notification.
Until next season, Howay the Korf!
CB