Jamaica’s Sunshine Girls wrapped up the Margaret Beckford Netball Series beating South Africa 59-47 for an unassailable 2-0 lead heading into the third and final match on Saturday.

In the curtain raiser, South Africa’s Under-21s also won the series after dismissing their Jamaican counterpart 49-32 inside the National Indoor Sports Centre.

Having won the first encounter 55-47 last Saturday, Jamaica have won two of the three games to pocket the Margaret Beckford trophy and head coach Sasher-Gaye Henry-Wright said it was a big accomplishment for the team.

“We know it was going to be a hard-fought game and I think the girls did extremely well. I think we had some good patches in our game. I think we had some very brilliant moments but I think there’s much room for improvement,” said Henry-Wright. “I think we lost the last quarter. Something for us to look at. We tried the rotations and I think we just want everybody to get this platform in terms of playing on this arena, getting the excitement, getting the intensity of what we need. So, I mean, we are quite pleased for the accomplishment tonight,” she explained.

Jamaica started quickly and opened up a five-point advantage after the first quarter, leading 18-13 and increasing the momentum to end the second quarter 34-26. The third quarter was Jamaica’s most dominant as they soared to 50-36 before scoring only nine goals in the fourth quarter but the damage was already done.

The Sunshine Girls were led by the outstanding goal shooter Shimona Jok netting a game-high 35 points from 37 attempts for a 95 per cent accuracy.

Goal attack Rhea Dixon went better going 100 percent scoring 16 goals from 16 attempts and Shanice Beckford hit 14 from 17 attempts.

Kameglo Maseko netted 19 from 20 attempts for South Africa while goal shooter Rolene Streutker scored 12 from 14 and Elmere Van Der Berg got 16 from 16 attempts.

South Africa’s coach Jenny Van Dyke had high praises for the world’s third-ranked Jamaican team. “What a great performance by the Sunshine Girls. Congratulations on a great win for them. No excuses for us. We need to do better. We are obviously quite disappointed in ourselves,” said Van Dyke.

“We expected quite a lot of ourselves from the second match. They were just so clinical on that first and second quarter, not leaving anything to chance and this is such an important and valuable, learning school for us with a fairly young and experienced squad. So definitely a lot of lessons that we’re taking out of this. But, yes, disappointed. We want to do better. We did win the final quarter, but they also added the entire bench to the game, which makes quite a big difference for them,” she pointed out.

“So, we’ll take that. A quarter win is a quarter win. But, yes, definitely a clinical performance by them. One match to go,” she added.

Both teams will meet again on Saturday in the third Test as South Africa will be hoping to leave on a winning note and the Sunshine Girls hoping for perfection.