Orange High School's Astley Cup dream alive

Having fallen agonisingly short in last week’s opening cup tie against their Bathurst counterparts, OHS desperately needed a good start to its home tie against Dubbo College Senior Campus yesterday.

Orange’s tennis, netball and girls’ soccer teams delivered, all scoring wins, and while the black and gold basketballers lost they, crucially, did so by a small margin, nullifying the overall points split.

The bottom line - OHS has a 112-point lead going into today’s second and final day of competition.

“It’s as good a start as we could have hoped for,” OHS Astley Cup co-ordinator Tegan Dray said.

Orange’s tennis team kicked things off in dominant fashion, demolishing their Dubbo counterparts in a 15-1 rout, and putting OHS on the front foot with a 94-6 points split.

From there Maddie Hales, Alex Kennedy and Katie Eslick led the charge for Orange High on the netball court, inspiring their side to a 44-28 victory, which Dubbo reversed in the basketball winning 41-28.

At that stage of the afternoon, Orange held a commanding 196-104 lead.

OHS then claimed a 3-2 win in a tight girls’ soccer affair to push the score to 256-144, a 112-point lead, ahead of today’s rugby league, hockey, athletics and boys’ soccer fixtures - along with the Mulvey Cup debate.

OHS rugby league coach Anthony Wharton said yesterday he was confident his side could score a win today, just a week after producing a stunning upset win over Bathurst.

Dubbo College sports captain Gaby Janetzki is confident Dubbo can regroup and turn their campaign around today.

“We’ve got a good day (today),” she said.

“We’ve got rugby league, which we’re quite strong at normally against Orange and Bathurst, the athletics is a bit 50-50 and I think we’ll do OK in the hockey and [boys’] soccer.

“It was only the competitors here [yesterday], but today we’ll have everyone, all our spectators.”