Robert Bailey, Freelance Writer

Defending champions St. Andrew High made a winning start in defence of the 2007 Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/Jamaica Hockey Federation (JHF) Girl's Under-16 title by edging Papine High 1-0 at the Mona Hockey field yesterday.

Demi Nicholson scored St. Andrew's all-important goal in the 45th minute when she fired home a powerful shot past goalkeeper Tameika Cunningham.

The first period was evenly contested with both teams missing clear chances. Avia Bowen, Jody-Ann Ward and Nicholson all missed for St. Andrew, while Danielle Francis and Trudy Knight were guilty of missing for Papine.

Ten minutes into the second period, Bowen's long- rage effort was well saved by Cunningham, who dived full stretch to her left.

A few minutes later Papine's Jody-Ann Issacs broke clear down the right flank, but with an open goal in sight, her shot went wide of the target.

Dr. Michelle Holt, coach of St. Andrew and Nicholson's mom, said she was pleased with her team's performance.

"I am satisfied with the victory but I am not quite satisfied with the way we played. This is the first game in the Under-16 competition and starting out with three points a coach would be hard to complain about anything else."

She added: "There is a lot of things that we have to do better to be successful. We certainly need to improve on our running off the ball, the legs (strength) of themidfielders and the run-outs (for the short corner)," Dr. Holt said.

"When we went ahead with five minutes to go in the game, we needed to continued to press for another goal rather than defend and that was a mistake which could have cost us the game," Dr. Holt explained.

Andrea Thomas, coach of Papine, said: "Disappointment for us today because we got about six different opportunities and never capitalised on any one of them (with the) open goal. The forwards just didn't perform as expected."

Thomas added: " I hope that we can come out with a little more positiveness, like we did for the Under-19 competition, and win the other next three remaining matches."