Shannon Thomas and Josie Clarke, were members of the Polding side, which was picked by a selection process which took place in Newcastle during February.

It was made up of girls from all the Catholic primary schools from Sydney to Tweed Heads and out as far as Mudgee and Inverell.

The competition was made up of 13 teams, 11 from Public Schools around the State and two from Catholic Schools.

They played five games, which went for one hour and 15 minutes each over the first two days, and they finished second in their pool (B) as they won four out of five games.

The third day was the playoffs. Polding played Sydney North who finished first in their pool (A).

Coming in to the finals Sydney North were not only undefeated, but had not had a run scored against them.

Polding stood up to the challenge and it was even running mid-way through the match at 2-2 but were over powered in the end and beaten 8-2.

They then played off for third and fourth spot against Riverina, which they lost in a tight game.

They finished fourth overall, which was the best result any Polding team has had in the history of the competition.

Their previous best was ninth.

The grand final was played between Sydney North and Sydney West which Sydney North won.

It was an excellent effort by the team as they did not know each other and had never trained together unlike all the Sydney teams.

Shannon and Josie learnt a lot from the games and was an eye opening experience as the pitchers were pitching balls at approx 80km/h, which they had not experienced before.

This was also a selection process for a NSW team, which one member of the Polding team was selected, Lara Seeto who is from St Martin’s in Sydney.