Park Ridge State High School’s AFL Academy is continuing to produce results for both the school and the students.
The AFL Academy senior boys side is currently unbeaten having one all six games in the school of excellence competition, and is eyeing off a state title with semi-finals on the agenda in the next school term and vice-captain Jack James said he felt his team was a true contender for the trophy this season.
“This year the senior boys have gone six and zero losses, so six wins, that’s really good; next term we go play in a double header to move on into the semi-finals, so hopefully we can get that done and then win the grand final which would be very nice,” he said.
James said his team when fully healthy are a real chance of beating anyone on their day.
“I think when we can finally get a our full team in, because so far this year we haven’t been able to get our full team in that we would like, but the boys have showed that they can stand up so i think when we can get that full team in we can beat anyone,” he said.
The senior girls academy side needs to beat Narangba next month to stay alive in the state competition but captain Caitlin McMaster was confident the team could get the victory they need.
“Our junior girls are undefeated so they’re on top, our senior girls are second on the ladder, but we have narrowly lost our two games for the year by one point and one goal,” she said.
“We have a game next term and that determines whether we go to semi-finals or not.
“We lost by one point against them in the first game of the year, we’re the better team so we should win.”
Academy director Derek Berry said both the academy’s junior sides are also playing well this season and added that the academy has high hopes for each of their teams.
“Our expectations are pretty high with each of our teams, as our junior boys are also in third, so we haven’t got a team in a position lower than third within the school of excellence,” he said.
Especially for our two senior teams we believe that they should go pretty deep into the finals and our junior girls, if everything stays the way it is and they keep improving that they can’t take out the state titles as well.
“It’s pretty exciting to have all four teams right in the mix.”
Berry said the moment of truth for each of the players will come after the school holidays.
“The junior and senior girls play July 13 which is the first week back and the boys play the week after on the 20th,” he said.
The school’s academy is currently recruiting again for budding Aussie Rules superstars to potentially become an academy member and Berry said now is the time to get in touch about upcoming come and try days.
We are really looking forward to locking in some new players, we have already got a few that we have lined that we’d like to see come here; we’re doing a come and try day half way through next term so we’re hoping that enrolments and applications will start coming in in those first few weeks then we’ll have the come and try day and hopefully get a few of them locked away and go from there,” he said.
