Come tomorrow, there will be about 100 less teenagers in Parkes.
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That’s because they’ll be attending this year’s NSW Junior State Cup for touch football, which begins Friday and runs until Sunday.
Six teams from the Parkes Pumas will leave for Port Macquarie on Thursday, joining about 380 sides taking part in the competition.
It’s the biggest Junior State Cup in history.
And Parkes Pumas director of senior competitions Noel Huggett said the juniors are very excited to play.
Parkes players will be competing in the under 12s boys and girls, under 14s boys and girls and under 16s boys and girls age groups at the Port Macquarie Regional Stadium and Tuffins Lane Playing Fields, with 14 juniors a side.
Seven round games will take place over Friday and Saturday, and depending how the Parkes Pumas teams fare will depend if they make the semi-finals and finals, both held on Sunday.
“It’s good, this is what we build up to and train for, the State Cup,” Huggett said.
“That’s the big event for our juniors.
“Actually it’s the biggest one ever and it’s the last year as one competition because it’s getting too big.”
From 2019, the Junior State Cup will be splitting in two, with NSW Touch forming Northern and Southern Conferences – next year taking place at Port Macquarie and Wagga Wagga respectively.
Finalists from these conferences will progress to a state final event, which its location is yet to be confirmed.
“We don’t know where we’ll be yet in terms of if we’ll be Southern or Northern,” Huggett said.
Parkes has been attending and competing at the Junior State Cup for more than 10 years.
The club held two trials earlier in the year to determine their teams for this year’s competition.
Juniors also had an opportunity to show off their skills at the 2017 Don Green Western Junior Championships held on November 19 in Dubbo.
It’s another carnival Parkes aims to represent every year, with the club last year taking all sides and coming away with two runners-up.
The club held a special training run and end-of-season gathering for the representative players on Monday evening.
The gathering also featured a slip and slide and a sausage sizzle.
Huggett said their goal for the State Cup is for the juniors to simply do their best.
“As long as we’re competitive and show pride in the Pumas guernsey, it doesn’t matter where we come,” he said.
The Parkes Pumas would like to thank their sponsors for all of their support – Byrnes Work Locker, Matthews Williams, McDonald’s, Parkes Services Club and Linx Logistics.
The last day of the Parkes junior touch football competition took place on Wednesday.
The club is now looking forward to holding their end-of-season presentation – only their second one to date – on Friday, March 2 at the Parkes Services Club.
