The Roxby Downs junior basketball grand finals were held on Saturday and almost every game has been described as a “nail biter”, as Roxby Downs Junior Basketball Association secretary Bev Zeptner reports.
The day started off with the under 10s round robin competition for about an hour, playing all the teams in the competition.
Each player got a participation trophy.
Both Under 12 girls and boys were exciting matches.
The girls won by just one point and the boys by two. It was a nail biting game where all players played well.
Mother nature showed her fury and the Under 14 teams had to play on the other court as the rain poured and ceiling leaked.
However it did not faze the teams moving court, as the games continued throughout the night.
The Under 17 girls’ score was not as close but the game itself was very competitive.
The last game was yet another nail biter, both teams played well but there had to be a winner.
The day ran very smoothly. This was the first time for a while that we started late and finished at night.
All games were good and competitive, the scores tell the story.
The season finished earlier this year, we had a few Saturday and Sunday games for this to happen.
We did not want to compete with the Adelaide carnival, Clipsal and the beginning of football. I think it worked well.
We had more basketballers this year representing Roxby at state level.
Bailey Evans, Jack Daly and Toby Smith made the state Under 14 team and Adam Ryan and Charlee Dalgleish were selected as reserve players and played at Albury in January.
Ethan Zeptner made the Under 15 state team and Ameila Rasheed made the Under 17 team and both went to Port Macquarie to compete in January.
Our basketballers are learning many skills due to the coaches of the local competition and the Association coaches who take the kids to carnivals.
We have a squad of Development Network Squad Program (DNSP) players run by Wes Knights from the Under 12s upwards.
With the combined skills of all the coaches we have many talented basketballers.
Thanks to our local umpires as well as the Port Augusta umpires Leanne and Robert for umpiring the grand finals. A job well done.
The crowd was great and the atmosphere was good with other basketballers, parents and friends supporting their teams.
The weather was sticky at first then a downpour of rain cooled things down, luckily there were no injuries on the day.
Our Under 14 and under 16 DNSP kids took on umpiring and coaching the younger grades this year and stepped up to the job.
They are putting what skills they have back into the younger basketballers.
The committee would like to thank the coaches, umpires, and parent support it had this year, without these people basketball would not happen.
The committee needs any interested people to join the committee and be a voice.
The annual general meeting is May 17 at 7.30pm at a place to be later advised. Thanks to Kateland, Emma, Bernie, Kate and Michael from the recreation centre for making the season run smoothly.
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