Gauteng’s turn in the sun to crown DSNC champions

It’s Gauteng’s turn to find the top schools to represent the province at the nationals of the DStv Schools Netball Challenge (DSNC).

Laerskool Concordia in Boksburg will be a hive of activity over two days, 17th and 18th June, to find the top eight schools, four Botho and four Ubuntu, that will battle for the title of the country’s top schools in the national leg of the competition set for 8-9 August.

The Gauteng leg will see 23 schools (18 Botho and five Ubuntu) play against each other in the group stages before the teams move into the quarterfinals and semifinals of the competition.

The tournament is divided into four pools, with each pool having at least one Ubuntu school. Pool A has five teams while the rest has six.

The top two finishing Botho schools in each pool proceed to their own stream quarterfinals while the top performing Ubuntu schools will move on to the semifinals of their stream.

Gauteng Schools Netball chairperson, Ronelle Nell, says the weekend promises exciting and contentious competition.

“We are looking forward to a weekend of excellent netball. It promises to be a jam packed cold with hot netball weekend. I am sure that there will be a couple of surprises with some of the names coming through being new to finals, for example Vosloorus, Aurora Girls in Ubuntu, Edenvale, Waterstone and Driehoek featuring in the Botho, section” says Nell.

The opening of school sport, this meant more schools were able to take part and Nell says it has been gratifying to see more schools competing this year.

“There are a couple of changes from last year as we had many more teams playing league this year. It has been tremendous to see the numbers playing at grassroot level, the competition was definitely tighter, and some fell out of qualifying by a mere point,” she says.