Jenny van Dyk, coach of the South African student team, praised her players for giving it their all, albeit falling just short of reclaiming the gold medal which they won at the previous World University Champs.
The South Africans lost by a single goal in the final against Uganda on Friday. Earlier in the day the teams played to a 42-all draw in their final group fixture.
“The girls were very disappointed; they wanted it badly and did everything they could,” Van Dyk said. “There was very little to choose between the teams in the final. They had a giant goal shooter witch forced our defenders to jump higher than ever before. They really did well, but you can only that much when they feed the balls high up there to her. We had to work extremely hard as a defensive unit to turn any balls around.
“The shooters missed only five goal attempts in the whole match which was brilliant to see. We also made less mistakes than in the first five matches (which the South Africans won by huge scores).
“We led by three goals going into the last quarter. Uganda converted all their centre passes and we weren’t able to do the same,” Van Dyk explained in her honest post-mortem of the match.
South Africa smashed America (117-4), Sri Lanka (116-6), Singapore (92-11), Zimbabwe (105-12) and Kenya (91-7) leading up to Friday’s matches.
According to Van Dyk credit is due to Uganda who had the support of a large and vocal home crowd which helped them pulled it through.
“It was quite intimidating for our players, but we expected that. They were very physical and the umpires didn’t always blow the contact very consistently,
“A number of their players represented their country’s senior team at the Africa Champs last month which they won. You could see they are a settled team,” Van Dyk said. She on the other hand had only three days beforehand to gel the team which was made up out of players from four universities.
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