Paarl Gimnasium and Khanyolwethu Senior Secondary School bow out of their United Kingdom tour with plenty of lessons and memories.
The 2026 DStv Schools Netball Challenge (DSNC), powered by Bestmed Medical Scheme, champions both suffered sobering defeats in their last friendly match to the England Under-18 side. The duo are in Britain as part of their prize for winning the sixth edition of the DSNC.
They each played four matches against Millfield High School, Loughborough University, and Bromsgrove School. The Young Roses were their last opponents.
Gimmies took to the court first and even though they put up a great fight, winning the third quarter, the English side proved to be more dominant and won the match 51-40. Gim coach Juline van der Merwe says that although she is disappointed by the loss, she is impressed with how her players showed up
“There’s a lot of speed on the ball, and on the movement. The agility is very strong. When you are not used to that standard of those structures, it is hard to counter them. I think that is where we fell short today. If you look at the quarter scores we were in it unfortunately, we couldn’t adapt quick enough in the first quarter. That was tough for us because we couldn’t get the margin to be smaller,” says van der Merwe.
PRICELESS EXPERIENCE
Khanyolwethu coach Dimpho Lephallo says there were a lot of lessons to learn in their last match. The Ubuntu champions went down 80-34. He says he is grateful that his players were exposed to this kind of level of netball.
“The tour has given us a lot of positives. The experience is priceless. There are a lot of lessons that we are going to take home. It has been a great experience that has opened our eyes to the kind of possibilities compared to where we come from. The way teams do things here, the training, is different. Netball is taken seriously here, they do not cut corners. I told the girls to absorb as much information as they can, even if we lose on the scoreboard but we would be winning a lot of lessons,” says Lephallo.
Goal defence Nicola van Heerden celebrated her 100th appearance for Gimmies. Van der Merwe says she is happy to have seen van Heerden grow in her netball over the years.
“She is such a solid player. She is someone you can depend on. She is an extremely hard worker. She doesn’t expect anything to just fall into her lap. She is actually a goalkeeper and this year when we selected the team I realised that I already had two very good goalkeepers. I had a chat with her, asked her if she would be keen to move to goal defence and she was keen. She is going to do amazing things in her netball. I am very excited to keep on watching her,” says the former Spar Protea.