On Wednesday, the Fielding Jets NFL football team left school at 6.00am to travel up to Loughborough University to compete in this years Flag Football National Championships. We were representing the school, London and the New York Jets. We were there as one of the 12 best teams in the UK and were all competing for the chance to represent the UK in the 2023 Pro Bowl in Las Vegas.

Standing in our way to begin with were the Buccaneers and the Jaguars who were drawn in our group. We started off against the Buccaneers and started well as we scored a touchdown early on in the first half. Our playbook looked good and the team were executing the plays with accuracy. Our defence was tight  and we started the day off with a comfortable win.

Our second and last game in the group was against the Jaguars who looked good in their first game. Jaguars started well and scored against us with some great attacking play. We struggled to get going in the game and they soon scored again. At half time we were down but not out. We came back in the second half and defended better to keep the Jags out and started scoring our own touchdowns. We ended the game as losers but only 1 touchdown and finished the stronger team.

After our group games had finished we were happy to find out we had qualified for the quarter finals. Our next opponents were decided based on seedings from all of the group games and it turned out we were due to play the Jaguars again. We learnt a lot in our first encounter with them and were buoyed by the fact that we finished the game as the stronger team. We planned our new approach to the game, set a game plan and stuck to it. We took an early lead, then conceded before taking the lead again. We were approaching the final minutes of the game and won possession knowing that if we kept the ball we would win. We couldn't quite run down the clock though and the Jags won possession with about 30 seconds left. We stayed calm and focussed and saw the game out to win 12-6 and go through to the semi finals.

In the semi finals we were up against a team from Manchester representing the Vikings. As expected games were getting tougher as we progressed further into the competition but we were growing into games as well. At the end of a close first half of flag football we found ourselves a touchdown down. In the second half though, things went from bad to worse as we made a few mistakes which we couldn't rectify and ended up losing the by 5 touchdowns.

At the start of the day we would have been over the moon to reach the semi finals and were very proud of our achievements, but now knowing how close we were we couldn't help but be disappointed. Still, it really was a huge achievement and each of our team conducted themselves brilliantly today as they cemented themselves as the joint 3rd best flag football team in the whole of the UK. Well done everyone.