KUCHING: SMK Bau girls ruled the roost in this year’s Kuching Secondary Schoold Hockey Championship when they swept both the Under15 and Under 18 titles.
The Bau girls finally knocked arch-nemesis SMK Penrissen off their perch in their Tuesday’s final match held recently at Sarawak Hockey Stadium of Jalan Padungan.
The teams in Group A were defending champion Penrissen, SMK Lake, SMK Matang Hilir and SM Sains.
In Group B were SMK Bau, SMK Paku, SMK Matang Jaya and SMK Santubong.
SMK Penrissen started off brightly in the 9-a-side tourney when they beat Lake 2-0 and stepped it up a notch by hammering both SMK Matang Hilir and SM Sains with identical 4-0 scores.
Last year’s losing finalists SMK Bau made it clear of their intention when they steam-rolled over Paku 6-o in their opener and soon after that dismantled SMK Matang Jaya 6-0 and they cruised to a 4-0 win over SMK Santubong.
The junior girls’ draw saw defending champion SMK Bau topping their three team Group A with a clean record.
Losing finalists Penrissen topped the four team Group B with a 4-0 record and making the junior girls’ semi-finals were MRSM and SMK Lake team.
The final match was a tight affair with both sides unable to break the 1-1 deadlock at the final whistle.
In the ensuing penalty strokes, the defending champs held their nerves to prevail 2-0 while the Lake team beat MRSM to take the bronze medal.
Losing semi-finalists, SMK Santubong consoled themselves with the bronze medal with a 2-1 win over SMK Lake in the battle for third place.
As expected, the final was a nail-biter with the score deadlocked at 1-1 at the end of the 24-minute match. The Bau girls joined their junior teammates in the winners’ circle after they scored on both chances while the defending champs could only score once.
SMk Bau coach Raphael Michael Ruda revealed that he had not put high hopes on his Under15 team while admitting to expecting big things from his senior girls.
“I knew we could win the Under18 title but i did not know how we would do in the Under15 competition. After seeing how we played, i knew that we had a good chance of doing very well in the Under15,” he said.
“I am very happy for the players. They worked hard and they deserve to win the championships,” said the coach whose Under15 team have now held the title since 2011.