The week (12-17 June) saw the City of Saints come alive as Kingswood College hosted a week-long K-Day derby between three of SA’s leading independent schools based in Makhanda (Grahamstown).
The century old rivalry between co-ed Kingswood College and St Andrews College and their sister school DSG, saw a week of excitement as the opposing schools competed against each other on the sports field, in the debates room, and across the chess table. The City was abuzz with visitors who descended from around the country and further abroad to enjoy the event. The good-spirited rivalry also saw students from the three schools collaborating in a music concert together and culminated with a rugby game on Saturday afternoon. Saturday saw close to 7000 people coming through the Kingswood College gates to join in the festivities and support their chosen teams.
Things started heating up on Friday night with a fierce 1st Netball game between Kingswood and DSG in the school’s packed High Performance centre. The game was won 35-19 by the home team with an onslaught of goals by Goal shooter Matipa Karimazondo and Goal Attack Aphola Bulani. The Kingswood 2nd netball team also beat DSG 27-21, a fitting celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of Kingswood being Co-ed and the evening culminated with jubilant war cries that echoed across the valley.
The 1st XV Rugby fixture and final event of the week-long celebration lived up it to its expectations with a tension filled and uncompromising contest taking place between two well coached and committed teams.
In a game of small margins Kingswood registered two early penalty conversions from long range courtesy of fly half Praise Matsila to secure a 6-0 lead. St Andrews responded with numerous passages of pressure which eventually lead to an unconverted try by flanker Matt-Taylor to reduce the score to 6-5 which remained the score at half time.
The second half started off in the same fashion with St Andrews applying pressure through multiple waves of attack and excellent kicking to pin Kingswood back into their third. The home team defended throughout, however the pressure told with St Andrew’s College winger Cloete eventually crossing the line to give his team a 10-6 lead going into the final quarter. St Andrews will rue not putting the game to bed with two minutes remaining and a line out in the opposition 22m area, however Kingswood survived the onslaught earning a penalty and with it, one final attempt to attack the St Andrew’s College half. The Kingswood line out had faltered throughout the game however they won the line out that mattered most and proceeded to string sixteen phases together to camp on the St Andrews line. In an unbelievable turn of events Kingswood hooker Amazing Vheriwa crossed the line with the hosts demonstrating incredible belief and composure to score in their first attempt in the game, albeit after time was up on the clock.
The strong Kingswood College 1st rugby team under coach James Winstanley have won 12 out of 13 games this season but have historically battled to win against their St Andrews College rivals on K-Day even though they have beaten them in other tournaments, they seem constantly haunted by K-Day and last pulled off a K-Day win in 2016, thus rapturous scenes followed when Kingswood winger Sine Brawen eventually converted the try to finish the game 13-10 to the home team.
Earlier on Saturday the Kingswood girls’ 1st hockey team held off a strong DSG first team for three chukkas but lost 4-0 in the final chukka to DSG and the boys hockey first team was won 1-0 to St Andrews on Wednesday evening.
