Bathurst High determined to make it three Astley Cups in a row

Bathurst will play host for their opening encounter before heading to Orange for their second tie next week.

Proceedings will kick-off this morning with the tennis, followed by boys’ basketball, girls’ netball and boys’ rugby league.

The clash will be rounded out tomorrow with athletics, girls’ and boys’ soccer and girls’ hockey.

A fixture of the girls’ soccer team for the past five years has been captain Jess Fearnley, who was in the rare position as a Year 7 student to be competing in the prestigious annual challenge.

Having been part of the 2010 drought-breaking win and further triumphs in 2012-13, she knows better than anyone what it means to be successful in Astley Cup.

“Being there since Year 7 has obviously given me a lot of experience. As a senior player and student now I feel like I’ve got something to offer for the younger players in the team,” she said.

“That first win in 2010 was surreal. With all the talk about the 21 years without a win, the stuff in the paper and on the local news, I was on a high for ages afterwards.

“Now that I’ve been here another few years and been part of two more wins, I want to be able to pass that on to the younger kids in the teams and be a bit of a role model in that regard, I guess.”

Fearnley will also be part of the athletics team in what is traditionally a relatively even contest whether it be against Dubbo or Orange.

The soccer, though, lends itself to being more crucial in the overall context of the cup because of the way the points are allocated.

A tight 1-0 win becomes a 66-34 win as far as cup points go and if the tie with Dubbo is still up for grabs by the time the soccer matches start tomorrow, there will be some nerves in the Bathurst camp.

“Being one of the last teams to play, we do feel like there’s a lot of pressure on, but if you can get that goal early on it really helps ease that,” Fearnley said.

“I think we have a strong girls’ side this year. Orange are a pretty good team too, but hopefully against Dubbo we get off to a good start.”

From the boys’ side of things, rugby league captain and athletics team member Jed Betts will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of older brother Jake, who led the side to success in 2013.

Part of the Astley Cup tradition himself since 2012, Jed says both opponents this year look like giving some headaches when it comes to rugby league.

“It should be pretty interesting. Both of those sides have some good players, whereas we’re probably a slightly younger team than they are,” he explained.

“It does change from year to year, so it is very hard to work out who’s going to be strong, but having an older team makes Dubbo a pretty tough opponent. 

“With the athletics, it isn’t something that I train at specifically, but the work I do with my football helps a lot and most of the training for that helps with running and fitness.”