By Chris Totobela
Young Makhandans made their way to the Ntsika Secondary School grounds on Saturday for the Ntsika Sports Festival which featured local secondary schools.
It was a fun-filled day with spectators enjoying football, netball and rugby games. There were some exciting clashes that kept the crowd on their feet.
In netball, one of the hotly-contested games pitted Nombulelo Secondary against Victoria Girls High (VG) with VG starting like a house on fire, keeping Nombulelo under enormous pressure.
But VG made costly mistakes towards the end of the last quarter and allowed Nombulelo back into the game. Nombulelo won the nail-biting encounter 11-10, with Sosinda Nondlwana scoring the winner for her school.
In the final, hosts Ntsika came up against tournament favourites Khutliso Daniels Secondary on a packed court.
As was expected, the majority of the crowd backed the home team, but it was always going to be a mammoth task for them to topple the in-form Khutliso Daniels side.
Ntsika scored first and kept Khutliso at bay for the first few minutes. But it did not take long for the well-oiled Khutliso Daniels machine to find their rhythm and control the game.
Khutliso led with big margins in all the first three quarters of the game and went on to win 32 -17.
It was a brave performance by the home side against a very strong Khutliso side led by captain Iviwe “Mdantsane” Hulu whose name was shouted throughout the game by fans who burst into song immediately after the game, singing ‘Halala Khutliso Halala’.
Football and rugby finals had to be postponed to Wednesday due to lack of lighting as it got dark.
TEM Mrwetyana will face Khutliso Daniels in the football final, while hosts Ntsika are set to lock horns with Andrew Moyakhe School of Excellence in the rugby final.
Event organiser and Ntsika Sports Officer Thando Petros spoke to Grocott’s Mail about the event. “I’m very happy with how successful this festival was. People came in numbers to support their different schools. We would like to thank everyone who took part – coaches, managers, referees and the participants.”
It is worth noting that the festival was an incident-free, entertaining event.
