Team : Under 16 Div 1
Sponsor: JayThom
Trophy Winners
Best and Fairest:- Harry Hodges
Runner Up Best and Fairest:- Harry Hill
Best Team Player:- Zach Donald
Most Courageous:- Jack Daley
Coachs Award:- Matt Stevenson
The under 16s team is a difficult year for the Hampton Rovers due to the boys having school and Sandringham Dragons commitments. We had reasonable numbers at pre-season training from February onwards, and it was great to see a lot of boys who couldn’t train still coming down and helping out.
We were lucky to pick up about 5-6 players from East Sandy, who proved to be very handy for us. Mark Devereaux was the assistant coach, and it was great to have a lot of support from the senior players and coaching staff, who came down regularly over the pre-season/in season to help with training and games.
We only managed to win two games for the year, including a 120 point win against Mt. Waverley. However, I think our best performance for the year was away against St Bedes, where we came from 25 points down at 3 quarter time to lose by 2 points. The team showed what they could do and how much they had improved, and if the game went for another 30 seconds Im sure we wouldve won.
While we didn’t win as many games as we would have liked, I think that the season was definitely a success, in that all the boys enjoyed playing week to week with each other, and we each improved over the course of the year. I really was glad to have a good group who most of the time listened to what I had to say. Everyone got along really well and the mood was always positive and encouraging.
Mark and I will be involved in coaching this group next year, along with heavy involvement from senior players again, and we hope that the playing group sticks with us next year, and in the years following that. While it will certainly be difficult for some boys to play a lot of games next year due to school/other commitments, we hope to have all players register and remain a part of the club. In doing so, we aim to make registration cost effective for parents of the boys who only play a limited amount of games. Having a group of friends and a club that you can always call home is such a valuable thing.
Thankyou to Wayne and Marina Stevenson, and Alan Jones for managing the team. And also to the parents for helping out with various jobs like running, taking photos, goal umpiring, and everything else that needs to happen to field a team.
Daniel Corp- Coach U16
