The triumphant Solent Juniors.
JUNIOR HOCKEYUnder-14s: Portsmouth and Southsea 0, Solent Juniors 4
SOLENT’S girls produced to great back-to-back wins last weekend, as the team attempted to catch up on a backlog of games.
Their first was against Portsmouth and Southsea, at 10am.
The hosts gave the Island side a good game but could not prevent the Wightlink-sponsored Solent from keeping up a steady pressure on their defence.
The Solent girls always need a good ten minutes for the pre-match jitters to settle down and were soon showing some great passing skills and the first goal came midway through the first half, with Megan Bridger coolly deflecting the ball from a long pass. Portsmouth and Southsea managed to break through the attacking IW girls on a couple of occasions but the defence was impenetrable and Solent goalkeeper, Brooke Barker, needed to come out of her goal on only one occasion to intercept the ball. The final score was 4-0 to Solent with goals from Hampshire player Georgia Whittle and mainland member Emma Ings.
Chichester 0, Solent Juniors 4
The team got straight on the bus and headed to Chichester for a 2pm start.
With some Sussex county players in their line-up, Chichester was not going to make life easy for the already tired Solent girls. The pace of this game was a lot faster and the Solent defence needed to dig deep to keep up with the break-away attacks of the Chichester forwards.
Ultimately though, Chichester could not prevent the sustained attack on their goal converting into a number of penalty corners and Solent soon took their chances with goals from Abbi Young, Whittle and Ings, who scored twice.
These two victories have earned Solent top spot with a maximum 18 points from six games.
Although the two fixtures that are left may well prove to be the hardest ones (against Southampton and Havant) it is unlikely any other team will overtake Solent on points or goal-difference.
Earlier this month, Solent Under-14s also confirmed their place in the semi-finals of the Hampshire Cup with a 6-3 win over New Milton.