Music performances in Assembly & lots of sport
End of Term Assembly
At the end of term we were treated to a couple of wonderful musical performances in assembly. As always, they were of the highest quality and you can watch them below.
Assessment week
Next week is our first assessment week of the year. Year 11 and 13 students will be sitting their exams in the sports hall as they continue their preparation for their external examinations this summer. Good luck to everyone; your hard work will pay off.
Team TA Sports Roundup
Sports Report
With the well earned half term break behind us it was time for Team TA to take to the sports arena once more. Once again it has been a very busy week with students taking part in a plethora of sports. This week belonged to the girls football teams. Mr Foulds has worked really hard in the last two years to lay the foundations of something special, he is now in the situation when there are at least 30 girls a week at training and with that comes the demand for more matches, so this week we have played 3 games, all against Paignton Community and Sports College. Our Year 7 girls lost out to a very strong Paignton side but there is certainly promise in the side, when they have more games under their belt and get used to playing together they will be a force to be reckoned with, speaking of which our Year 8 girls have become just that, they followed up their resounding National Cup success last week with a 10-0 win over the Paignton girls, not to be outdone our Year 9/10 girls travelled to Paignton on Wednesday and beat them 3-2 in a very entertaining game. Well done to all girls who took part. Also on Wednesday our 3rd XI entertained a team from Penwith College Cornwall who travelled some 3 hours to be on the end of a 7-2 defeat. Our 3rd team are developing game to game and look very organised both in defence and attack. Our Year 8 boys team lost 3-1 to a very strong St Peters Exeter side in the National Cup and our 1st XI were cruelly knocked out of the National College Cup by the Steve Claridge Football Academy. Losing on penalties after a 1-1 draw in a game that we had so many chances in it was hard to see how it even came to penalties. There has also been Year 9 rugby, Year 7/8 basketball action and Year 9/10 netball action this week which again shows the breath of our extra curricular offer, there are separate reports for these matches elsewhere in this blog. All in all another busy but very rewarding week with Team TA , looking ahead to next week we will be able to write about more boys and girls football, more netball, more basketball, more rugby, triathlon, dodgeball, table tennis. Never a dull moment.
Rugby
Year 9
The Year 9 rugby team travelled to Cuthbert Mayne on Wednesday. After a close fought 15 minutes TA scored through a typical Charlie Barnes, dynamic run. Once we scored the Cuthbert defence was weakened and 4 more tries were run in. Congratulations to Elias Rawles and Reece Shaw who both scored their debut TA tries with some powerful runs. Scott Rowe continued with his excellent performances and ran in another 2 tries.
Football
3rd Team Sixth Form
The Third Team played at home on Wednesday against Penwith College, looking for back to back victories after beating Newton Abbot College last week. TA dominated proceedings from the outset, looking to score a goal early to settle the players a little bit. After 8 minutes TA took the lead, hard work from Jordan Bastow to chase down a lost cause created panic in the away defense, and he won possession before pulling the ball back to Dan Rowe who finished from the edge of the box. Shortly after, TA were two up, a pinpoint corner delivery from the left foot of Rowe directly crossing the goal line despite the best intentions of Jamie Lane who tried to claim a touch. TA were on fire in this first half, and whilst Penwith had a couple of half chances, there was nothing too much for Ryan Parkin in goal, to worry about. As the first half wore on, a quick counter attack lead by the influential Louie-Jay Hayward saw him beat a couple of players and release Dan Rowe on the left wing who finished it off tidily. Half time score 3-0.
TA started the second half in similar manner as the first although found themselves pegged back to 3-2 within the first 10 minutes. Firstly, Parkin got caught in possession by the Penwith forward for a simple tap in, before Penwith added a second direct from a free-kick. This however prompted the boys back into action. The lively Steeve Yava who was a constant threat managed to score a fine individual goal before Corey Finch set up Ben Tolman to restore a comfortable lead. Steeve then added his second with a fine goal from the edge of the box, before brother Gerrard Yava scored a carbon copy goal to round off a fine 7-2 victory.
An excellent result which is further testament to the individual and collective improvement in this team. Solid defensive performance, and at times, devastating attacking play saw us as comfortable winners.
Girls Football
It’s been a busy week for the school’s ever growing activities involving our female footballers. On Tuesday the teams from Years 7 and 8 entertained teams from Paignton with mixed results; the Year 7’s eventually losing 5-1 despite a great effort with Darcie Baker scoring our goal.
The year 8 team are building quite a reputation after an impressive 11-0 victory which follows on from lasts week’s ESFA cup thrashing of Tavistock.
On Wednesday the year 9/10 team travelled to Paignton and came away with 3 points following a 3-2 victory with goals from Roisin Payne, Scarlett Williams and Amelia Baker. It should be a great year for all of our girls teams with more games and opportunities than ever before!
Year 9 Netball
The year 9 Netball team took a trip out to Stover School on Thursday afternoon to play, for the first time in the National Schools U14 competiton. Knowing that this was going to be a very tough afternoon the girls all turned up in high spirits, determined to do well and prove that we deserved to be at this competition.
The girls started off in a very evenly matched game against PCSA, where they took a little time to settle but soon found their form and began to take the lead. Some fantastic defence from Georgia Davies, Daisy Crampton Poole and Ellie Mitchell meant that TA continued to turn the ball over and gave our shooters lots of opportunities and with Mya Miles on top form shooting we ended the game breaking a new school record with our first Netball win at a National Schools competition.
The next game again saw TA play some great netball against Kingsbridge and with lots of turn overs occurring the score remained 1-1 at half time. Unfortunately the second half didn’t go our way and the final result, despite some great play ended with the TA girls missing out on another win by 3 goals.
After the lunch break they girls needed a good warm up to regain their focus and with the toughest games ahead of them the girls took to the court with determination ready to play Churston. In the first half the girls took a while to settle but once they defended well and managed to keep Churston to only a 3 goal lead at half time, however in the second game the girls began to tire and Churston took control meaning the girls ended up losing the game by 9 goals.
Our final game was against Teign. This team are a very drilled team who train both in and out of school together. Even though they pilled the pressure on our girls, the girls never gave up despite being down by a large amount of goals at half time. In the second half the girls managed to pull back a goal however this was not enough for this well organised and highly talent team and again TA ended on the wrong side of a win.
Despite the results not all going our way the girls showed great determination to keep going and kept their heads held high in each game. The girls were an absolute pleasure to work with and would also like to Thank Mrs Hadden for being our professional chauffeur for the afternoon.
Year 7 and 8 Basketball
Our year 7 and 8 basketball team travelled to Spires for the first central venue league basketball of this season. The team of 8 consisted of 2 Year 8 students and 6 Year 7 students. It was obvious from the start of their campaign that we were going to hold our own against any of the teams present and the boys did not disappoint. 3 wins against Spires and St Cuthbert Mayne (two separate matches) and a very entertaining 20-20 draw v KEVICCS were just reward for this hard working group of players who Mr Harries said were a pleasure to work with. Stoic defence from Findley Lewis and Finley Burns, great work on rebounds from Freddie Kingdom and Silas Buckley, excellent ball carrying from Dylan Wright, Alfie Sams and Brajan Bieglski and some good long range shots from Finley Last were the foundations on which we built and will continue to build on as the season progresses.
House Competitions
Students of the Week
Students of the week this week are : Boris Pugh – Yr 7, Steeve Yava – Yr 11, Azize Isufi – Yr 8, Williams Myers-O’Keefe – Yr 12, Joshua Hurrell – Yr 12, Corey Darke – Yr 9, Daniel Pratt – Yr 10, Abbie Hodgskins – Yr 14 (not in photo). Thank you to my (many!) colleagues for standing in for me as I was unnable to be there for the picture.