Date: Wed, March 24, 2010
Miners Win more Gold
The Ballarat Miners under 16 girls have struck gold at the 2010 Victorian Country Championships last weekend. After Friday night’s VJBL game the under 16 boys and girls squads travelled to Bendigo to take on the finest basketball teams that country Victoria has to offer.
After seven games of basketball the girl’s team was able to break a 16 year drought and take the title from a very talented Horsham team.
Leading up to the title game the Ballarat girls played 3 games in their pool and crossover final on the Saturday night and won all games comfortably to qualify for Championship division games on the Sunday.
The girls played arch rivals Bendigo in the quarter final and with greater depth on the bench helped with applying pressure and continually running the floor and wearing them down recording a 25 point win to advance to the Semi Final.
This victory then set up a semi-final clash with Mildura. This match-up has caused many upsets for Ballarat in the past; however this was not the case this year. Ballarat were able to produce their “best performance of the weekend” said Coach Glenn White. “The girls were able to hold Mildura to a low score and win by 13 points”.
As is the case each year, the Championship match would prove to be a matter of survival of the fittest. Having already player six games of basketball in a very short amount of time, Ballarat had to dig deep to find the energy to take out the title.
Ballarat did not get off to an ideal start to the match with Horsham leading 22 – 6 early in the first half. However, by the end of the first half Ballarat had fought back to trail by six points.
Some defensive changes in the second half saw Ballarat outscore Horsham by 14 points, taking the win and the Championship trophy by nine points.
Coach Glenn White said he was “proud of the way the team had responded as they could have quite easily given up. The fighting spirit and the character the girls showed were the reason they were able to take out the title”.
The Miners U/16 boy’s side also travelled to Bendigo but were unable to come home with the gold. With a tough match up for the first game of the weekend against Warragul, Ballarat seemed to struggle for height and speed. Despite Ballarat being much smaller than the Warragul team they challenge their opposition right until the last minutes of the game, only losing the match by two points.
The later game against arch rivals, Geelong, also allowed Coach Darren Thomas to see some positive signs from the Miners. Up until this point, Geelong had not been challenged on the scoreboard. To Ballarat’s credit this was not the case in this game. After a tight first quarter Ballarat were able to stick with their taller opponents and keep the scores within an arm’s reach. As the second quarter started so did Geelong’s outside shooting. Ballarat then found themselves down by twelve points at the half time break. The second half saw Ballarat throw another challenge at the defending champions, pulling the margin back to four points. Unfortunately, Geelong were better under pressure and ran away to win the game by nine points.
After suffering two loses, Ballarat was placed in the Division 2 competition for Sunday’s finals series. A win against Corio Bay in the semi-final set up a grand final clash against Warrnambool. Unfortunately, Ballarat were the smaller team again and were over-run by the power of the Warrnambool team.
