Nathan Lambert  |  K-12 Sport Co-ordinator

NSW ALL SCHOOLS ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

Our Primary Basketball teams recently competed in the Central Coast Basketball Challenge. This is a big competition where many schools from the Central Coast play a round robin format to determine the winning school. 

Our Years 3 and 4 Boys and Girls teams competed last Thursday, each playing three games and hoping to qualify for the Semi Finals. The Girls won several games and only just missed out on making the Finals; the boys had a tough draw and though went down in each game, fought to the end and came close to winning on several occasions. Well done to the Years 3 and 4 teams for a wonderful effort. 

The Senior Boys and Girls teams (Years 5 and 6) played their competition on Friday and, like the Junior teams the day before, were up against some quality players. The skill level of students at this age was amazing and our students were definitely up to the challenge. 

To start off their competition, the Senior Boys came out firing. They showed brilliant skills and passing to produce a number of scoring opportunities, and in the end, won their first game convincingly 30-22. 

Their second game was another great opportunity to work together as a team and to start developing their passing and shooting. They dominated the game from the opening whistle and won easily 43-7. 

Star of the Sea was their opponent in their final game and they were tough competition. Our boys fought valiantly, losing the first half 20-2 and then making a comeback in the second to equal points but still going down 36-18 (16-16 in the second half). It was a wonderful effort and one of which the boys can be proud.

They finished winning two out of three games which was great practise for the CSSA State Basketball Championships this week. 

The Senior Girls wanted to make a statement in their first game and they did exactly that. They started strong and finished even stronger, winning their first game 60-1 and then following that up with a just as impressive victory 8-0 in the second match. This would now lead them to a final match-off against Star of the Sea, both of these teams the stand outs of the competition. This was played like a Final ... 

The girls’ intensity, focus and determination was second-to-none, where they came out firing from the starting whistle and took an early lead. Now, both of our teams are known to fight to the very end, whether they were in front or trailing on the scoreboard, and this is exactly what the girls did. They had the early lead and fought hard to keep it. 

Star of the Sea kept creating chances to score but were denied of many occasions by the brilliant 1-on-1 defence of our girls.  Our rebounds and determination to stop every scoring chance, to then counterattack with our own offensive shots, was amazing and going into the second half, our girls were leading.

The score line in basketball can change very quickly and even though our girls were leading, they knew that if they dropped the intensity, things could change quickly. Somehow, our girls upped their game and played even harder, eventually winning the match 30-18. This was such a phenomenal performance to not only go undefeated throughout the tournament, but to beat probably the other top-ranked team by 12 points, just shows what talent we have at this school.

Our teams, our players were all phenomenal over both tournaments. Their efforts and encouragement of one another was fantastic and I am very proud of all of them. Also, a big thank you to our coaches Mrs Macleod (Junior Girls), Mr Smith (Junior Boys) and Mr Vartan (Senior Girls) for all they did as well. We wish our Senior teams all the best for the CSSA State Basketball Championships held this week.

SECONDARY ATHLETICS CARNIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

THE LEAGUE

We have only one more week of round competitions left of The League before Semi Finals and Finals are held in Week 8. With teams jostling for positions on the leaderboard, it will be a great week of sport coming up! 

Here is the updated leaderboard after this week’s competition: