At the beginning of this year, the Open Touch squad had intended to travel south to the Gold Coast Performance Centre in Runaway Bay for a three-day Touch camp; however, due to COVID, we were unfortunately, unable to attend. Mrs Nisbett and the School organised for us to spend a day at Rangakarra, aiming to improve our skills, bond with the new team, and enable us to prepare for the upcoming 2022 Touch season.
Last weekend, the Open Touch girls arrived bright and early at 8 am to embrace the beginning of the 2022 Touch season. The day began with a new warm-up, which was created to help improve our communication skills within the team while warming up for the morning session. After the warm-up, we completed agility pole drills that helped us refine our line defence and communication skills. We learned a ruck defence, that was new to all players, to help stop opponents from moving down the field to score a try. After each skills session, we enjoyed some downtime and getting to know each other. We also learned three new attacking moves to optimise our chance of scoring tries, these being: an ‘Aussie’; ‘Counties’; and ‘ML/FML’. Our team practiced these and our line defence with a 6 vs 6.
Before the last session of the day, we played some blind Touch, with black-out goggles, for some fun and team bonding, providing us with a boost of energy for the last session consisting of game play. At the end of the day, we put all our skills, new and old, to the test with 5 x 2-minute full field games.
Despite the hot weather, the Touch Open team one-day camp was filled with fun activities that we know will help improve our skills and knowledge of the game; ultimately, increasing our chances of success throughout the upcoming season. Our main goal for this season is to put these new skills to the test, have fun and try to win as many games as possible!
Grace Hynes (12L) and Isabelle Pham (12O)
2022 Touch Captains
