Logan Steele and the Team. Logan is Canterbury based
Thanks for your financial assistance to attend the World Games with the New Zealand Womens Fistball team. Below is a summary of how the team went.
It was an amazing experience to be at such a large international sporting event. The athletes village was excellent and the playing venue was exceptional. A lot preparation had gone into the event to ensure it was successful. And successful it was.
The team met in Hong Kong on August 6 where we all travelled together to Chengdu. It was hot and humid which was very different from the cold, wet and muddy conditions that the team was used to. The joys of training in a NZ winter. After two days of acclimatization and training the competition started on the 9th. There were 8 teams split into two pools. Gold and Silver. We were in Silver having qualified 7th at the November 2025 World Champs. All the games where best of 5 sets.
Our first game was the first game of the Fistball competition, on field 1 and was televised. What an opening game it was. We played Chile who were two positions above us in the standings and a team who soundly beat us at the November World Champs. The ladies played out of their skins and came away with the win after a very tight 5 set match. 11-9, 8-11, 13-11, 9-11, 12-10. It showed how much the team had improved since November.
We played Argentina in the afternoon which again went to 5 sets. This was another team we hadn’t beaten in the past. Unfortunately we lost that one 2 sets to 3. 11-9, 6-11, 8-11, 12-10, 11-13. Again very close with little separating the two teams.
The second day was rained off and when we resumed again on the 11th we faced the USA team, a team who we hadn’t lost to in the past. We won that in 3 sets, 11-9, 11-5, 11-8. See attached photos. This meant we finished second in our pool and played the third placed team (Germany) from the top pool. Germany are previous winners from multiple World Champs and World Games. We knew we’d be up against it. They were too strong beating us in 3 sets, 11-4, 11-5, 11-4. It showed the gulf between tier 1 and tier 2 teams. That said the team by no means disgraced themselves.
We followed that up in the afternoon with another game against Argentina. This time we won in 4 sets. 11-7, 12-10, 7-11, 15-13. An awesome result and meant we qualified for the playoff for 5th and 6th against Chile. This was played on the 13th which was the final day of competition where the final standings/medals were decided.
Unfortunately we weren’t able to reproduce our effort from the first day and lost to Chile in 3 sets. 11-2, 11-7, 11-7. Thus we qualified 6th which was an improvement from our seeding position; we beat teams we hadn’t in the past; played one of the best teams in the world; got to watch the best teams play, which was amazing; and showed the world a small team from NZ punching well above its weight.
We’re always on the lookout for more players. If anyone would like to know more about Fistball please contact me for further.
Once again thank so much for your financial contribution. It was greatly appreciated and helped enable the team to put their best foot forward.