Victoria Wins Basketball Shield.

The first piece of luck brought by Victoria's Easter egg was a good draw: Otago first, Auckland second, Canterbury last. The first half of the O.U. match consisted of good team work by Otago and rather scrappy work by our girls who were feeling their way on the wet surface. We noticed Nan Bullen manfully leaping one puddle only to land in another. Still, we managed to reach 9-9 at half time. In the second half, however, it was a different tale, our team had settled down and betting took a different turn. Our defence was on the spot and the ball was passing cleaningly from centre to goal where noble efforts gave us victory 20-17.

The team were of very mixed feeling-about the Auckland match.

Our goals were not good enough for Auckland's strong defence, but in the defence third our girls were playing brilliantly against A.U.C.'s goals. We saw Marion Bell make three outstanding interceptions in as many minutes and each time V.U.C. scored a goal from it. Erice Overton played excellently and seemed never to be more than a couple of inches from her opponent's side. Half time showed the score to be 4-6 against us. In the second half Janet Grainger and Joy Osborne changed and the centre realised that two long passes were working better than three short one in their third and promptly changed their tactics. Nora McLaren and Rosamund Drummond showed up well during this match which finished with the score at 10-9.

The match against Canterbury was not so fast as the other two games, which was fortunate, as some of our girls were feeling the strain. V.U.C. ran to a 4-0 lead and then Nora, feeling she'd earned something, dashed over to a supporter, asked her to "open wide" and smartly removed the chewing gum from her mouth. This gave our centres new life, but also, the sight of Nora chewing incited Canta's goals to action, and the half-time score was 8-4 to Victoria. In the second half our team met little opposition and were able to carry through their system of play with ease. Marion Bell and Erice Overton were brilliant, the centres handled the ball well, and our forwards were shooting accurately, and the game finished with the score 16-8.