Cricket
I HAVE been the Wheatbelt Female Cricket Ambassador for the past three to four years.
Each January there is a competition called the Girls Country Cricket Carnival, organised by the WACA.
It is my job to coach and manage a team of about eight girls from all over the Wheatbelt region at the carnival to play against other regional teams such as Great Southern, Goldfields, South West, Peel and Broome.
The format of the carnival includes indoor cricket, super 8s games and Twenty20s played over the three days.
This year I had girls from Toodyay, Brookton, Tammin, Cunderdin and Narrogin participating in the Wheatbelt team.
All girls played exceptionally well as the age of most of the girls were 12, youngest being 11 and eldest 14.
The first night we played indoor cricket, which was the first lot of games the girls had played together as a team.
The Wheatbelt girls won all four of the indoor games that night, giving them the biggest confidence boost for the rest of the evening.
We got the chance to go for a quick swim at the beach when the teams returned to the camp, which was a nice cool down and relaxing session for them.
On the second day the team got a chance to play some Super 8 games (or some of you may know of them as Milo Twenty20 Blast) against all the other teams to work out a standing on the ladder.
Playing four more games that were a bit longer than the indoor games was different for the girls but all thoroughly enjoyed it.
We had three games before lunch and one afterwards so the whole camp would have time to get to the Scorchers game at the WACA. I was so proud of them after the second day, winning another three out of four games.
Getting a bit sunburnt made it worth it when we got to see the Scorchers game, which some girls had never been to before.
While at the WACA I was informed by the organiser that my team (the Wheatbelt Warriors) finished on top of the ladder for the five regional teams. I was happy for them.
They've been playing so well. This meant we were in the semi-final on Friday morning for a Twenty20 game and a win would get us to the grand final.
The girls played Peel that morning and won by eight runs.
You can imagine the smiles on their faces as it came down to the last few overs for a run chase.
Then came the grand final for the regional 15s competition, playing Goldfields.
We batted first and made 96. It was our highest score for the week.
All the girls were in high spirits going onto the field, but the Goldfields girls came out swinging and managed to get our score and finish 10 runs in front at the end of their 20 overs.
Overall, I'm over the moon at how well the girls have played and I'm sure they've shown themselves that they are great cricket players.
All promising a return for next year.
