The Kovsies were too hesitant and afraid of making mistakes, believes team member Marna Claassens.
Claassens, a goal attack, spoke about her team’s heavy loss in the semi-final of the Varsity Netball competition. They went down by 37-53 to NWU in Bloemfontein to finish in fourth position – their second worse performance in the five years of the series.
“We were hesitant to play and afraid to take chances. You can’t play like that. You have to take chances in order to see what works and what doesn’t. Eventually it cost us,” Claassens said.
The scores were still level at halftime, but things went pear-shaped in the third quarter which NWU won by 18 goals to 6. In that period as well as the fourth quarter, the winning team made a huge number of intercepts. In total it was 20 to the 7 of the Kovsies and NWU also managed 43 turnovers to 26.
“I think that might be due to our vision that was lacking. We seemed to be anxious as we desperately wanted to win. The winning factor might have become too big as it meant that we didn’t enjoy ourselves on court,” the two-time Varsity Netball champ with the NWU explained.
The NWU defenders, Zandré Kruger (FNB Player of the Match), Simoné Rabie and Monique Reyneke all had great performances and were especially good in securing possession from rebounds, in total nearly twice as many as the Kovsies defenders could.
“They are the most difficult defenders to play against. We made it even more difficult for ourselves by playing into their hands by throwing balls right into their hands or gave weak passes for them to intercept with ease.”
The 23-year-old student, who is doing her masters in Disaster Risk Management, said it is very difficult to predict a winner in the final and believes it would be as close as going into extra time.
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