Basketball

By Warwick Kain | Posted: Thursday November 18, 2021

The 2021 season fielded 79 players across nine teams.

The Senior Girls coached by Danielle Frost and Erica Stedman, the Senior Boys coached by Billy Thompson and Kim Hayward and the Junior Boys coached by Jase Frost stepped up to their respective A grade competitions. These teams faced some tough competition in A grade but were resilient to the core. The Senior girls went down valiantly in the final, the junior boys slipping up in the semi final, while the senior boy composed mainly of year 11’s faced a tough competition of mainly year 13’s.

Three junior development teams improved constantly under the coaching of Mark Weston (Year 9 boys) and Eva Woodhouse the Junior Girls team and demonstrated the depth of growing ability in the school's basketballers. The senior girls development development team, coached by the knowledgeable Chris Mein will be pushing for a spot in the A grade next season. Then there were the two social senior boys team who played with a party atmosphere under the watchful eye of their coach Kirsty Currie.  

BASKETBALL - Senior A girls

Kia ora all, this is a wonderful opportunity to share with you some of the highlights of our Senior A Girls basketball season, And what a season its been! A new team with which worked hard to develop good communication and skills on court, and gave 100% while in play.

Friday nights could be tough going, as end of the week games take all those energy stores. Strong team morale is what gets the best out of our team and knowing whatever the result we had the opportunity to grow. Senior A Girls grew with each game that was played with many stand out moments, shows of great defence and the team offence was at times flawless and streamlined- we may not have won every game but we took the opportunity to reflect and learn from the opposition's game play.

The week finals came around, COVID had crept its way back into our lives, putting our chances at playing in the finals at risk. After an uncertain couple of weeks and no indication whether the finals would go ahead, we decided to have our team breakup. As we were having what we thought would be our last game, Mr Kain walked into the gym and said to us finals were going ahead that Friday, and that we would be playing St Kevin’s. At this point everyone suddenly turned into game mode, and our breakup ended up turning into a very serious practice! Unfortunately no spectators were allowed, but the fact we were still able to play made it worth it!

We began the 1st quarter very strong, leading 8-4 throughout most, until St Kevin’s got away with 3 fast breaks - and scored off all of them, resulting in the score being 10-8 to St Kevin’s at the end of the first quarter. In the 2nd quarter, St Kevin’s pulled together and only let us score once during the quarter, making the score 12-23 at half time. At this point, our team was beginning to overthink and worry, but Mrs Frost and Erica decided we would change our defence to a zone defence, which we had never tried before. Considering it was our first time, it ended up working well. By the beginning of the 3rd quarter the score was 22-43. In the 4th quarter, we were exhausted, and let St Kevin’s get away. We ended up losing 24-67.

This was by far the ultimate highlight, coming 2nd in the playoffs against St Kevin's! They are a force to be reckoned with and demonstrated some extremely skilled play.

We are proud of our team and their determination to keep motivated and stay resilient even when the play got tough! 2nd place is a fabulous effort for our team's first season together.

Special mention to Makaia Teremoana - Raynbid who made the Otago U17 Basketball team this season.

A multitude of thanks goes to our amazing coaches Danielle Frost and Erica, thanks for being on the sidelines keeping us focused and determined!

Looking forward to the next session and all it brings!

• Co captains, Makaia Teremoana-Raynbird and Eva Woodhouse

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