Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls secure clean sweep netball series victory against South Africa

Jamaica: Sunshine Girls of Jamaica won the “Margaret Beckford Sunshine Series” following their clean-sweep victory in three out of three Netball games of the series against South Africa. In the last match, they secured victory with a dominant score of 58-47 on Saturday and claimed 11 points at their home ground of National Indoor Sports Centre. 

With its clean-sweep series victory, Sunshine Girls enhanced their rank in the global ranking of Netball and stood on the third position. The Head Coach of the team Sasher-Gaye Henry expressed delight with the performance of the team and added that they have been emerging with great determination and hard work. 

Notably, Jamaican team also attained victory with a score of 2-1 in a series against England in November 2024 as the series was named as “Vitality Netball Horizon”. The head Coach added that they were happy with the victory as this was a great opportunity for the girls to excel in these kinds of series. 

Sunshine Girls defeated South Africa in a match of the World Cup with a score of 67-49 in South Africa. The World cup was held from July to August 2024, enhancing the ranking of the team in the world graph for the game. 

Head Coach added that this is their second encounter with South Africa and expressed happiness with the result they received at the field. She noted that the girls have played great game as they wanted to prepare the girls for several other international games in Netball as the team will again participate in the leagues, hence, the work is underway to prepare the team with enhancement of their skills. 

The game against South Africa was started with the dominance of Sunshine Girls in first six minutes as they took the lead of 10 goals. However, the former team tried to return to the game with the performance of Elmere van de Berg and Kamo-gelo Maskeo as the lead decreased to 5 goals at the end of the first quarter with a score of 14-9. 

Sunshine Girls managed to gain their momentum back in the third quarter and increase the lad with a score of 29-19 at the half time. After that, the girls had remained in attacking phase in the last circles and secured victory against South Africa. 

Beckford from Jamaica made 14 goals in her 19 attempts and led the team towards victory against South Africa.