Hoërskool Duineveld Shines as Frogfoot U/17 7s Rugby Tournament Reaches Thrilling Finale
The second season of The 7s School Rugby Tournament, sponsored by Frogfoot Networks, a licensed open-access fibre infrastructure provider, has come to an exciting finish at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria, with teams from 12 schools competing to be named the U/17 7s Champions. In an exciting game, Hoërskool Duineveld (Upington) defeated Hoërskool Strand 19-14 to be crowned the Cup Winners, with the runner up Hoërskool Strand.
The tournament started with 132 schools participating with a total of 1584 players. The final tournament saw a total of 12 schools and 144 players participating.
Following several weeks of thrilling 7s rugby games, 2073 tries and 1393 points scored, the school team winners of the final tournament included:
- CUP Winner (1st): Duineveld with the man of the match, Jaquin Jansen
- PLATE Winner (2nd): Pietersburg with the man of the match, Hardus Otto
- BOWL Winner (3rd): Secunda with man of the match, Zander Scheepers
- SHIELD Winner (4th): Hoerskool Logbron with man of the match, Jaco van Wyk
The player of the tour was also announced, with Gregan Jansen from Duineveld taking the trophy.
The finals brought together the winning schools from the various regional tournaments that have been taking place over the past month, as well as a few wildcard entries – those teams that finished as runners-up, but recorded a high number of tournament points as well as scored highly during their games and just missed out on qualification.
This year, the competition was revised and expanded to bring the opportunity to play in the competition to more youngsters and put the spotlight on South Africa’s burgeoning rugby talent. “The Frogfoot 7s series journey continues to be an incredible adventure as we embrace the privilege of hosting these exceptionally gifted young athletes. It’s not about rugby – it’s about young men. It’s not about making a championship team – it’s about making championship boys. The quality of rugby and talent in these young men have left us speechless at many a moment,” says Miranda Du Preez, Head of Brand Activations at Frogfoot.
According to Du Preez, the Champions Cup marked the perfect crescendo to a long year, just before the start of year-end exams for many of the youngsters participating. She applauded the work of the coaches and team managers for shaping and guiding the youngsters who take to the field – especially since the development of rugby talent starts on the school field.
“The unwavering enthusiasm and boundless potential of these youngsters never ceased to amaze us. With every single Man of the Match moment we shared, we got to know more about these players, and it’s not far-fetched to imagine that among these young men, we may discover the future stars who will light up the Blitzboks in the years ahead. We are proud to be able to create a playground for these schoolboys to be seen and to showcase their talent and have fun while doing so. Encouragingly, we already have requests from numerous schools to get their name on the waiting list for next year’s series,” concludes Du Preez.
