TWO Hawkesbury girls soccer teams have made semi-finals in Football NSW’s State Cup, and will play for a grand final spot on Sunday, July 3.
The Lowlands Wanderers under-12 girls, and the Colo under-18 girls both made the semi-finals, after winning a number of games.
Colo defeated Harrington United 7-0 in there quarter-final, while the Wanderers defeated AC United 1-0.
The Gazette spoke to Ellyce Ballantyne, Keira Fox and Teliya Sluiter from the Wanderers, who all said their team had bonded through adversity in the competition.
Ellyce said the competition had been exciting so far.
“One game went to extra time and penalty shootouts and we won in the penalty shootout,” she said.
“None of us had ever done penalty shootouts before so it was really exciting.”
She said win or lose on Sunday, she thought the team had done a good job.
“I won't be sad if we get knocked out because we made it that far and it is a really good achievement for our team,” she said.
“We've had some new people in the team.We work well and have good team work and we communicate a lot and never blame each other or fight so we work well together.”
Teliya said the level of competition got the best out of the team.
“I find it really exciting but it is a lot of pressure as well. We know we are going to get knocked out if we lose so we all play better,” she said.
Teliya will unfortunately miss Sunday’s clash, and said she was relying on her team mate Keira, one of the team’s strikers, to score goals so she could play in the grand final.
Keira said she had scored four goals during the competition.
“The other teams are very good. It puts a lot of pressure on me to score and it gets the team to work really hard,” she said.
“With the local comp there are good teams but with the state comp they are much better and they are very challenging.”
The Wanderers will play Shellharbour, while Colo will play Balgownie.