Basketball Success Continues

HBHS Basketball coach Doug Courtney reported back on the progress of the Senior Basketball team during the recent season.

We went to the regional competition to qualify for the Nationals.  We have placed sixth in New Zealand during 2011.  The regional competition has been compressed because of the Rugby World Cup, so we knew our National results before we finished playing our regional games this year.  The build up to the games was relatively easy, given the talent and experience in this year's team, but the games themselves were relatively hard. 

St John's provides us with the strongest competition in the Waikato.  We play them on a regular basis.  There were two neat things about the recent final: we got to play St John's, and we got to do it in the Claudelands Events Centre.  That was the first basketball game ever to be played on that court. 

The regional win has allowed us to consolidate last year's performance.  This will be the last year that a number of our senior boys are with us, so it was really special that we ended well, in that arena environment.  Our national standing has improved by six places from last year, which is also a testament to the hard work of the senior boys over the summer.

There is definitely a lot of young talent following the seniors through.  They are by definition not as hardened as our more experienced boys, so we will work back from first principles and make qualification for the New Zealand competition our first top priority in the new year. 

We would like to publically acknowledge the efforts of Vicki Rangiawha, our manager.  She has been with the team for five years, and has taken wonderful care of us.  Winger Suzuki and Kea Trailers have been great sponsors, and we hope we have done them proud.