With the basketball season already upon us, 2018 is shaping up to be another busy year at Western Springs. With the rebuild fully underway the excitement is real and the knowledge of getting a new gym motivates the basketball programme to have doubled in their numbers with three Junior teams and 5 Senior teams competing this year.
This season also sees the inclusion of new coaches in the Junior programme and student coaches in the Senior. With basketball being the fastest growing sport in New Zealand there is no difference here at Western Springs with several athletes playing basketball at a representative level including invites to the NZ National Selection Trials.
This year our focus for the basketball programme is to build and develop Elite athletes and a High Performance Programme that will create legitimate pathways for student athletes here at Springs.
In recent seasons our primary focus was to facilitate participation and build a community of students that were eager to learn and to create the same whanau mentality within the basketball programme that Springs is well known for, which I am proud to say we have achieved.
As we look forward to our teams’ competing this year our Senior Premier Boys team started the year off well beating new comer and heavy hitter Mt Roskill College in a nail biter relegation match to remain in the Premier Mens’ League for 2018.
The Premier team is is a contender for the title this year with a 3-1 start to the season with the ultimate goal of qualifying for Nationals later in the year.
The other teams started well also competing at the Western Zone Competition with all teams having wins and the u19 Senior Boys Teams (A&B) leading the competition after 4 rounds.
This year saw a change in the Junior competition allowing year 10 students to compete with year 9s which makes it even harder for new players to compete with as a year 9 student competing against the bigger year 10 student just doesnt seem fair!!
