Jules Kates impresses as netball side defeat University of Essex rivals comfortably

The University of East London’s netball first team cruised past the University of Essex at the SportsDock on Wednesday, beating them 46-13 to earn a 17th consecutive victory.

UEL dominated from the start as team captain/goal attack Stacie Smith and goal scorer Jules Kates led the offense.

Kates, who joined the team this year as a fresher, has already made an impact in UEL’s 2-0 start to the season.

The first quarter was relatively close but the hosts were in control and leading 9-2, but the second was one-way traffic.

Essex were outscored 14-1 and the east Londoners led 23-3 going into the interval with UEL in complete control.

Although the away side scored five times in the quarter after the break, University of East London still led 35-8 going into the final quarter.

UEL managed to add more points in the fourth to earn themselves a 33-point victory.

“With Jules, we’ve got so much more height. So my role this year is more about feeding her the ball, rather than me doing so much shooting this year,” said captain Smith.

“She’s completely new to us — we played our first game last week and she absolutely smashed it. We’re going to have a good season.”

Smith was pleased with the margin of their success against Essex and discussed the aims for the campaign.

“We played really well. We’ve got a small squad this year, so it’s really difficult on fitness,” added the east London skipper.

“But we dominated from the off against Essex and we kept fighting until the end. We’re now in the cup, so we have to play all the way up to Division Two, so if we keep fighting in these games it gets us ready to fight all the way through in those games.”

UEL have now won 17 games on the trot dating back to 22 October 2014. They will look to continue that streak when they play Reading next Wednesday at 2pm in a cup game.

Smith said: “It’s going to be tough, it’s a bit of a trek, and it’s our first cup game. We’re just going to go as hard as we can and keep fighting through the cup and hopefully get to the final.”