It was an occasion of dominance from the St Barnabas club yesterday evening when four finals of the Barbados Netball Association’s Knockout Competition were staged at the Netball Stadium.
In the main event, the senior knockout final, Pine Hill Dairy St. Barnabas thrashed Spooners Hill 41-25 with Barbados’ towering national
goal-shoot Laurel Browne sinking 31 goals from 39 attempts to lead St. Barnabas’ offensive efforts. She got assistance from Shaniqua Thomas who netted eight goals from eleven attempts and Shekira Boxill who chipped in with two from six attempts.
Spooners Hill initially held their own, ending the first quarter down by seven goals at 13-6 with most of their productivity coming from Nicole Bailey, though she did miss a number of goal attempts. St. Barnabas opened up a bigger gap with each succeeding quarter and at the half the score read 21-12, After three periods it was 34-17. The absence of arguably the finest netballer to play for Barbados, Lydia Bishop, was not easily overcome by Spooners Hill.
Spooners Hill had difficulties making passes, several of which were intercepted by the speedy St Barnabas unit. Bailey missed 12 of her 34 attempts at goal and this did not help the Spooners Hill cause. Kelly Conliffe netted two goals from four attempts and Joy-Ann Cooke found the net once from her three attempts for St. Barnabas.
In the Intermediate One final, Nakita Cyrus of Shottas United was all over CO Williams Rangers as her goal output and indeed attempts at goal were more than the Rangers team which were beaten 33-27. Cyrus had 30 goals from 36 attempts while Sandra Maynard netted three goals from nine attempts.
For Rangers Olivia Walcott and Shaquilla Davis both made 18 attempts at goal while scoring 15 and 12 goals respectively.
Though beaten Rangers were very much in the game for long periods and the score read eight-all after the first quarter. Shottas took a two-goal advantage into half-time at 16-14 and had extended this to 25-23 at the end of the third quarter.
The strength of the St. Barnabas netball programme was demonstrated when they also won both the Intermediate Two and Junior Knockout finals.
In Intermediate Two St. Barnabas defeated UWI Blackbirds 20-18 in a low-scoring affair. It was a case of percentage shooting as Blackbirds found themselves in more offensive positions than the winners but missed a higher percentage of attempts than St. Barnabas. For St. Barnabas Adrienne Griffith had 16 goals from 21 attempts while Niara Forde scored the other four from seven attempts. For Blackbirds Melanie Griffith scored half of her 14 attempts while goal-attack Penny Greene netted 11 goals from 18 attempts.
No more than two goals separated the evenly matched teams at the breaks with the lead interchanging on a number of occasions. At the end of the first quarter St. Barnabas were in the ascendancy leading 4-2 but by the half-time period Blackbirds had moved to a 10-8 advantage. St. Barnabas narrowed the gap but were still down by one goal at the end of the third quarter, 14-13.
The final quarter saw Blackbirds missing several goals while St. Barnabas were a bit more consistent. They managed to score seven goals in the final quarter while limiting their opponents to four goals.
In the Junior Knockout St. Barnabas emerged 17-14 winners over Bico Delight. Tyra Holder netted 13 goals from 24 attempts while Felicia Millar had four goals from six attempts. For the Delight lasses, Tianna Catlyn had nine goals from 14 attempts while Selena Taylor scored five goals from 12 attempts.