DUBBO College has found itself in the strange position of trailing in the Astley Cup, despite winning three of the four sports on offer during day one of the annual competition at Bathurst.
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Dubbo won the rugby league, netball and basketball but suffered a huge loss in the tennis that handed Bathurst High School a 50-point lead in their search for a third consecutive Cup victory.
"It cost us a few points so it was a little disappointing," Dubbo sports co-ordinator Tim Berry said of the heavy loss in the tennis.
The 15 sets to 1 win in the tennis gave Bathurst a 94-6 split of the Cup points to begin with and, as hard as Dubbo tried, they could only make small inroads into the deficit as the day wore on but Berry said it was pleasing to see his school claim victory in the remaining sports.
"It was really good, the football went right down to the wire.
" Our netball girls just did it with ease while the basketball team worked hard and got the win."
Dubbo won a close basketball contest 39-33, before taking out the girls' netball 49-38.
Both results translated to a 57-43 division of the Cup points.
With boys' and girls' soccer, hockey and athletics on tomorrow, Berry said his side faced a real challenge to make up the deficit but said a couple of strong performances could easily make the difference.
"In sports like soccer and hockey, if we can keep them to zero then that changes things dramatically," he said. "It's not a huge margin but we also can't let them get away because that will really make it difficult."
Meanwhile Bathurst sports co-ordinator Darren Hamilton said the close result in the rugby league kept his school where they needed to be.
"We felt building up to this that we were going to be stronger on the second day with the boys and girls soccer as well as the girls hockey," Hamilton said.
"In the rugby league we were a bit worried that if things went the wrong way we could be on the end of a fairly heavy loss, Dubbo have five players in the regional side.
"They really came out and bashed us for the first 15 minutes and I think our boys were pretty rattled for a while there before they started to gain a bit of composure.
"We were down three tries to one at half-time and again in the early part of the second half they really lifted the intensity but we hit back well to get back to within four points and really claw back some ground."
While they had some success on the tennis courts in the past, Hamilton admitted even he was shocked by the lopsided scoreline that has set his team's charge up brilliantly.
"Never has that happened, certainly not against Dubbo anyway, that is a real first," he said.
"The talk was that both teams would be quite evenly matched in the tennis but it wasn't the case, and the matches themselves weren't close either in a lot of cases. There were a handful of close games but there was a lot of 6-0 or 6-1 sets too."
Day two will kick off this morning with the athletics at the Sportsground before the attention shifts to Proctor Park for the two soccer matches while the day finishes with hockey at Cooke Park.
