Not only did Cindy Gilchrist's girls lead wire-to-wire over the league leaders, they booked themselves a spot in the grand final which will either be a rematch with Life Studio, or a clash with the Tegan Dray-coached Orange High School Hornets who won their elimination finals match 36-30 over Hawks Royal.

A slow start plagued Orange City in their round seven loss to Life Studio and this time around, Gilchrist made sure her team was dialled in from the word go.

"We started strongly and with a different mindset," Gilchrist said.

"We had a bit of a shake up the week before and we didn't want to feel that way again.

"We trained hard, played hard and we were a lot stronger in the circle."

And those improvements were always going to be needed after the way Life Studio scored against City in the last round of the season and Gilchrist praised the girls for tightening things up defensively.

"Our full court defence was very good," she said.

"Players like Maddie Cole were outstanding but everyone was excellent across the court."

Saturday September 19 will be the date in which Orange City officially shoots for its 13^th consecutive title and whether it be against the Hornets or Life Studio, Gilchrist knows the girls have their work cut out for them.

"Orange High are young guns and they will be very hungry next week," she said.

"Their coach Tegan Dray will have them ready to go with a game plan.

"Life Studio has a lot of old heads on their team and a lot of those girls have played together for a while.

"Our wins against both teams have been by the same margin so whoever we play, it's going to be close."

Saturday marked the exit of the newly-formed Hawks Royal side and Gilchrist thinks the rest of the league is fortunate it was only a seven-week season as Amanda Hurford's girls would have only gotten better as the weeks went on.

"Their team had only just formed and their new coach was doing a really good job," she said.

"If they can hold a similar group of players next season they're going to be really up there on the ladder."

Regardless of who finished where in 2020, Gilchrist knows the future of the top-flight ONA competition is in good hands and thinks it's as competitive as it's ever been.

"It's going to be a fairly open competition next year and hopefully it stays that way," she said.

An interesting narrative heading into the latter weeks of the finals is the playing status of OHS coach Tegan Dray.

The long-time ONA gun is a player on the Orange City roster but has previously stated she's a coach first and player second, meaning she'd have to make the tough decision between the two roles if the Hornets were to end up facing City in the grand final.