Karalee, St Mary’s flying high
THE Ipswich Primary Schools AFL competition culminated in an exciting day of grand finals with school teams from across the region showcasing their talents.
Teams from Bundamba, Mt Crosby, Churchill, Ipswich Central, Raceview, Ipswich Girls' Grammar School, Bethany Lutheran Primary School and Silkstone State School played off for final ladder positions.
Teams from Karalee, St Mary's, Brassall State School, Blair State School and Ipswich Grammar played their way through the season to appear on grand final day.
Blair and Ipswich Grammar played the final round of regular games in the junior and senior boys' competitions with mixed results making for some entertaining football.
Blair won the junior game by one point with Ipswich Grammar repaying the favour, taking the senior game by the same margin.
In the first of the grand finals, a strong Karalee team withstood a challenge from St Mary's 2, claiming the girls' division premiership with a 43-26 win.
Karalee coach Jon Buggins was proud of his team's efforts after the girls lost just one game this season.
Having been the two strongest teams this season, St Mary's and Brassall went head-to-head in the junior boys' grand final.
A hard and fast start by their opposition left Brassall to peg back a St Mary's lead.
Despite the challenge from Brassall, two late term goals secured a 16 point victory for St Mary's.
St Mary's won 37-21.
It was back-to-back wins for St Mary's when their senior boys' team took their grand final by a similar margin - 36-21 over Karalee.
The two teams traded goals in the early stages of the game, with St Mary's managing to open up a small lead at the end of the first quarter.
Karalee battled hard in the second and third quarters, trailing by just three points at the final break.
Despite their best efforts, they couldn't hold off St Mary's who remained strong in the final stages to seal the win.
Brisbane West school development officer Ryan Stanley said all teams had improved over the season.
"Although premiers are decided in the final games it was really good to see the other schools, which didn't make it to the grand final still enjoying their matches right to the very end," he said.
"The Ipswich Primary Schools competition is continually one of our strongest and we're really looking forward to running the competition again in 2013."
A number of players from the Ipswich region were selected in the Future Stars (boys) and Sunfire Superstars (girls) representative teams based on their 2012 season.
They are: Brandon Tryhorn (Raceview), Sam Litzow (Raceview), Alex Smit (St Mary's), River Kinsella (Blair), Kashiz Luafutu (St Francis Xavier), Edmund Pita (Riverview), Junior Notoa (Riverview), Prezley Vaiova (Riverview), Steven Willingale (Riverview), Anna Top (Riverview) and Angel Draven (Riverview).
