The final round of VE U18 Girls Grand Prix (Tier 2) was held at Woodchurch HS on Sunday 13th March.

Teams involved: Wirral, Stockport, Frodsham, Newcastle Staffs.

Team: Beth Douch (capt), Lauren Parker, Gina Nuttall, Nina Hofmann, Ella Overall, Bethany Connor, Lucy Pitman, Verity Wilcox

Results:

Wirral vs Frodsham      won 2-0, 25-15, 25-17

Wirral vs Stockport      lost 1-2, 25-23, 19-25, 5-15

Wirral vs Newcastle Staffs        lost 0-2, 15-25, 20-25

Wirral finished 3rd in the pool of 4.

Our somewhat depleted team began with a predictably easy win over Frodsham and looked very strong. The next match was a cracker and showed how much Stockport have improved since Round 1 in January. Stockport proved to be very good at defence and our team struggled to hit winners so the match featured lots of chasing and picking up and some great rallies. We shaded the first set largely due to Stockport errors, but they came back strongly in the second. It was hard-fought, close and really enjoyable throughout but failure to capitalise when we had serve and a strong run of serves from Stockport near the end saw them home. We needed a good start in set 3 but quickly went 0-6 as our serve-receive struggled against strong Stockport serving and the team never recovered going down 5-15. Despite losing this was the hardest and most enjoyable match our girls have played in the whole Grand Prix competition and worth the price of entry on its own.

The match against Newcastle Staffs was disappointment by comparison. Staffs won it on stronger more reliable serving as Wirral’s service game stuttered.