SEVERAL Berea Schools will be participating in the 2023 SPAR KZN Schoolgirls’ Hockey Challenge with the tournament travelling to ten regions in KZN, beginning in the first week in March.

The tournament, which began in 2011, has fast become a highlight fixture in the schoolgirls’ hockey calendar. Close to 75 high school girls’ first teams will be taking to the various hockey fields around KZN in the tournament’s 13th year.

The ten regionals will take place over three months, early in the year, with a two-month break before the highly contested Grand Finals, which will take place at St Mary’s DSG on the weekend of July 22 and 23. The ten crowned 2023 regional champions will head to Kloof to duel it out on the Astro for the highly coveted winning title of the SPAR KZN Schoolgirls’ Hockey Challenge. The trophy has only three names engraved on it over the ten years that it has been played. They are Durban Girls’ College – Durban Central Regional Winner – 2013, 2014, 2015, 2022; St Anne’s College – Pietermaritzburg North Regional Winner – 2011, and St Mary’s DSG – Highway Regional Winner – 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

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Building momentum to the Grand Finals, the first regional tournament tips off with defending champions in the Durban North Regional, Our Lady of Fatima, welcoming teams on Saturday, March 11, at their ‘home turf’, the Riverside Sports Club. Thomas More College hosts the fierce and fiery Highway Regional on Sunday, March 12, at their grounds.

Kuswag Hoërskool opens up the April diary with the Durban South Regional that they will host at the 3 Schools Trust Astro in Glenwood on Saturday, April 15. The following day – Sunday, April 16 – Durban Girls’ High School welcomes teams from the Durban Central Regional back to their home ground at the 3 Schools Trust Astro. Heading up the road, teams around Hilton will converge at St Anne’s College for the Pietermaritzburg North Regional on Saturday, April 22. And in the final back-to-back weekend in 2023, the challenge heads down the South Coast to Creston College for the Sisonke and Ugu Regional on Sunday, April 23.

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On Saturday, May 6, St Dominic’s School will see teams from around Newcastle and surrounds taking to their Astro for the KZN Northern Regional. The tournament heads inland to Wartburg Kirchdorf School on Saturday, May 13, for the uMvoti and oThukela Regional. For the penultimate regional, Epworth School hosts the Pietermaritzburg Central Regional on Sunday, May 14. And in its familiar spot, Grantleigh College in Empangeni rounds off the 2023 Challenge with teams partaking in the Northern KZN Coastal Regional on Saturday, May 30.

For spectators who are unable to get to the side of the pitch, the ten regionals and the Grand Finals will be live-streamed by SuperSport Schools on their mobile app or website.

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