The hockey first team has won the league for a second consecutive year
The Wits men’s hockey first team are the undefeated champions of this year’s Southern Gauteng Hockey premier league after beating the Wanderers 3-2 during their last league game on Saturday, September 7
This is the team’s second victory this year after having won the University Sports South Africa Hockey Tournament in July.
Wits hockey forward, Rusten Abrahams told Wits Vuvuzela, “This year we adopted a new mantra which was ‘find a way to win’,”
“We’ve gone from losing a game to winning or drawing the game… It was a tough season where we’ve played teams off the park to not hitting our true potential but still managing to pick up points”, said Abrahams.
“Even though we won the league last year, this year meant more to me because every team wanted to knock us off the pedestal. This means we did not have an underdog mentality but we are here to prove that we are the best and that we did not get lucky last year,” added Abrahams.
Defender and Wits captain Michael Marki told Wits Vuvuzela that winning the premier league meant a lot for the team, “considering that last year was the first time Wits won the league”.
Marki said that a number of players are leaving the team this year but, “the main thing is we have just laid the foundation for future teams to compete in the league and for youngsters coming out of school to choose Wits as the destination where they can study and play hockey.”
Wits hockey head coach Ricky West told Wits Vuvuzela that the team has done tremendously well winning matches back to back in the season.
“So we won the premier league for the first time in 50 odd years and we had to defend our title which was obviously pretty special. We wrote down an audacious goal in the beginning of the year and we just believed that we could do it,” the coach said.
West says it will be difficult to win again in the future, but they will work very hard to achieve that goal next year.
FEATURED IMAGE: Wits men’s hockey 1st team wins the Southern Gauteng Premier League for the second time. Photo: Provided.
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