By Kenneth Tan/Red Sports

Republic Polytechnic, Friday, May 7, 2010 – Defending champions Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) went a step closer to retaining their crown after a 66-30 win over St Andrew’s Junior College (SAJC) in their second Group X game to qualify for the A Division Netball Championship semi-finals.

ACJC started off the second round by thrashing Anderson Junior College (AJC) 75-28 while SAJC lost out to Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) 27-62.

With confidence brimming from their good start to the second round, ACJC opened up a 16-6 lead at the end of the first quarter.

They continued their good work in the second quarter by launching several quick attacks that saw them outscoring SAJC 19 goals to seven to lead 35-13.

SAJC improved in the third quarter to land nine points to achieve their highest scoring quarter. However ACJC’s attack proved too strong as they scored another 18 goals to achieve an insurmountable lead of 53-21.

The final quarter was a much more frantic one with both teams taking their turns to score. Despite the outcome of the match seemingly a foregone conclusion, SAJC put up a strong fight as they limited ACJC to 13 goals in this quarter while scoring eight themselves to end the match losing 30-66.

The loss meant SAJC have no chance of qualifying for the semi-finals. However, captain Dawn Yeo remained proud of her team’s efforts in the match.

“I felt the team gave our best shot,” commented Dawn. “After losing to HCI in the first match, the team was feeling really down as we were hoping to win that match and to make it to the top four.”

“However we fought really hard today and went all the way. Thus I am proud of the team’s efforts,” she added.

In another Group X game played later, HCI thrashed AJC 77-17 to join ACJC in the last four.

In the final round of Group X fixtures scheduled for Monday, May 10th, ACJC will take on fellow qualifiers HCI at 3.30pm to determine who will finish top of Group X while SAJC take on AJC in the earlier game at 2pm where only pride is at stake.

Both matches will be played in Republic Polytechnic.

Go to the SCHOOLS FIXTURES & RESULTS page for more information.