{"id":71598,"date":"2025-05-06T15:30:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T13:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssschoolsplus.co.za\/?p=71598"},"modified":"2025-05-06T15:30:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T13:30:37","slug":"a-big-weekend-of-hockey-awaits-kzn-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/?p=71598","title":{"rendered":"A big weekend of hockey awaits KZN teams"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_71599\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-71599\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-71599\" src=\"https:\/\/ssschoolsplus.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Northwood-teamsession-400x310.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"310\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-71599\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Little details matter: Justin Collins having a team talk with his Northwood players. Photo: Northwood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A big week of action lies ahead for most of KwaZulu-Natal&#8217;s leading boys&#8217; hockey teams. Two of the top sides travel to the highveld, while the rest have fixtures in familiar surroundings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Clifton College<\/strong> hosts <strong>St Alban&#8217;s College<\/strong> on their Founders Weekend, with the first team clash happening at 11:15 on Saturday morning at the <strong>Riverside Sports Club<\/strong>, the home of Clifton Sport.<\/p>\n<p>Coach <strong>Calvin Price<\/strong>&#8216;s boys, after a strong showing at the <strong>Standard Bank Hibbert Shield<\/strong>, where they finished as the top-performing KZN side, will be aiming to provide great winning entertainment for their alumni and other spectators.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, on their Founders Weekend, they faced <strong>St Charles College<\/strong> and walloped them 5-2. They&#8217;ll be hoping for another classy performance against their visitors from Pretoria.<\/p>\n<p>Coach <strong>Mark Sanders&#8217;<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Maritzburg College<\/strong> has a date with Clifton&#8217;s victims from last year, St Charles. <em><strong>College<\/strong> <\/em>heads into the tie looking to build upon their last result at the Hibbert Shield, a 2-1 win over <strong>Selborne College<\/strong>. Sanders\u2019 team achieved perfectly symmetrical results in Gqeberha &#8211; they won two, lost two, and drew two matches.<\/p>\n<p>Last week,\u00a0<strong>Kearsney<\/strong> <strong>College<\/strong> fought back to draw 1-1 with <strong>Northwood<\/strong> in a <strong>Friday Nite Lights<\/strong> match, in Durban. Coach <strong>Keegan Pearce<\/strong>&#8216;s side showed plenty of heart against a dangerous <em><strong>Knights<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0side. Pearce would welcome a similarly spirited showing against coach <strong>Nick B\u00e9richon<\/strong>\u2019s <strong>Michaelhouse team<\/strong>, which has quietly put together an impressive season.<\/p>\n<p>Like Kearsney, Michaelhouse comes into the contest off the back of a 1-1 draw. They crossed swords with their arch-rivals, <strong>Hilton<\/strong> <strong>College<\/strong>, last Saturday and shared the spoils with coach <strong>Damian Kimfley\u2019s<\/strong> well-oiled unit.<\/p>\n<p>Hilton, meanwhile, takes on <strong>Pretoria Boys\u2019 High <\/strong>at home in a derby. Earlier this season, they met at the <strong>Nomads Hockey Festival<\/strong>, in Johannesburg, and it took a late equaliser for Hilton to pull off a 2-2 draw.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hockey - Hilton College vs Pretoria Boys&amp;apos; High School - Nomands U18 Hockey Festival - 30 March 2025\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6gwfFfXVjsQ?start=3&amp;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Kimfley will hope that his side can apply the positives from their tie against Michaelhouse and walk away with a victory in front of their home fans.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Westville Boys&#8217; High<\/strong> and Northwood head up to the highveld for derby encounters.<\/p>\n<p>Coach <strong>Cam Mackay<\/strong>&#8216;s young Westville side has taken a while to get into the swing of the season. However, they have shown flashes of brilliance and their form is on the up.<\/p>\n<p>The <em><strong>Griffin<\/strong><\/em> finished in a respectable 10th place at the Hibbert Shield and will take confidence from their performances at <strong>Grey High School<\/strong> when they travel to meet <strong>King Edward VII<\/strong> <strong>(KES)<\/strong> in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>Coach <strong>Justin Collins\u2019<\/strong> Northwood burned a few chances in their 1-1 draw with Kearsney last Friday. Collins will hope that his charges are more clinical in the circle in their showdown against an in-form <strong>Jeppe High School for Boys<\/strong> team, in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>Besides the spurned opportunities against Kearsney, Collins was impressed by the way his charges acquitted themselves on the Astro.<\/p>\n<p>Fans and followers of KZN boys&#8217; hockey have an almost full buffet from which to choose. However, <strong>Durban High School<\/strong> <strong>(DHS) <\/strong>and coach <strong>Keegan Hezlett <\/strong>have the weekend off. They&#8217;ll be back in action in the new week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A big week of action lies ahead for most of KwaZulu-Natal&#8217;s leading boys&#8217; hockey teams. Two of the top sides travel to the highveld, while the rest have fixtures in familiar surroundings. Clifton College hosts St Alban&#8217;s College on their Founders Weekend, with the first team clash happening at 11:15 on Saturday morning at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":71599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/71599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}