Wednesday 23rd of April saw the second successful Hampshire girls 7s Festival, hosted by Peter Symonds College, where teams across the country enjoyed top class coaching and competitive fixtures to be crowned Hampshire Girls’ Champions.

The festival was set up to encourage girls into the game of rugby, provide a stepping stone for girls to progress further in the sport, and provide more sporting opportunities for girls. This included combining teams together to get free coaching from top county coaches and in the afternoon a league competition.

The standard of the teams entered was very strong, and the eventual winners were Seevic from Essex, with Peter Symonds College coming second.

Mark Rugman, tournament organiser and coach of Peter Symonds women’s team, said: “The aim of the day was getting Further Education girls together to learn skills in rugby and play competitive games in a safe and enjoyable environment.

“This year’s competition saw a mixture of standards from teams, to British Colleges Sport Regional standard to teams starting out, and both showed fantastic ability which is a great advert for the game”.  

“Personally, I’m very pleased for the Peter Symonds girls who finished as runners-up from a strong assembled field of teams. This tops another fantastic season for the girls, and rewards their hard work and efforts”

Jade Scott, Southdown’s College team manager, added: “I had a minibus of singing girls all the way home on Wednesday. They absolutely loved it! Some had never received a medal before for anything and were really proud wearing it round college on Thursday.”

The tournament was only a success due to the hard work and effort from volunteers helping to run the event. A special thanks goes to Mark Rugman for organising the event, Alan Fryer for refereeing the fixtures, Dan Brown for securing funding, Sandra Showell for photography, Sharon Evans and Jaime Sanders for lending their support throughout the day.

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