St David’s Primary end title drought
St David’s Primary School captured their first Island-wide Primary School title in decades earlier this week.The East Zone champions prevailed over West Zone champions Paget Primary School by two -wickets in an enthralling battle that went right down to the wire at Shelly Bay Field.St David’s restricted Paget to 68 for three in the latter’s allotted 15 overs and then replied with 69 for six with four balls to spare.Guiding the East Enders to victory was Blaiz Hall who thumped an unbeaten 35 and Rohaan Richards who chipped in with 11 and also claimed a wicket.Hall’s brother Kashe and David Symonds claimed the remaining Paget wickets to fall.Blaiz and Kashe are the sons of former St George’s Cup Match player Troy Hall.St David’s were led by wicketkeeper LeiLanni Nesbeth who was the only female cricketer on the pitch.Jerziah Dill (three for six) and Jenico Sealey (30) performed admirably in a losing cause for Paget Primary who slumped to their first loss of the season at the final hurdle.Commenting on her team’s long-awaited triumph, St David’s coach and PE/Health teacher Lyndsy Ford said: “We went out very strong and focused because we knew that the competition was going to be the highest yet that we had faced.“We were very confident with our bowling and fielding so we chose to do that first and they were very successful in keeping Paget down to 68 runs. We then went in and paced ourselves, played well and managed to win the game.“As a unit I really stress sportsmanship and team work and they were very supportive of each other through the mistakes and success and that was the key that helped bring us through the whole season. We lost only one game (against Harrington Sound Primary) during the whole season.”Paget Primary coach and PE teacher Damon Edwards said his team’s fielding let them down when it mattered most.“We played well but dropped too many catches,” he said. “We dropped Blaiz three times and he went on to score 35.”The last time St David’s were crowned national Primary School champions was in the late 1960s.