Future Stars Division one premiers

After 8 months of preparation the under 12 Girls Ballarat Rush team has won the Future Stars Division One Victorian Country Championships over the past weekend in Bendigo.

Six early wins in the round matches on Saturday and Sunday set up the weekend for Ballarat with victories over Churchill (29 points), Korumburra (40 points) Wodonga (16) Bellarine (45 points) Traralgon (5) and Colac by (51).

The quarterfinal match up against Maffra turned out to be a blow out with the girls winning by 39 points.

The focus then after having a relative easy weekend by winning by large margins was the task of beating a tough Geelong outfit which in previous Tournaments had defeated the girls. However head coach Megan Clark and assistant coach Nick Grylewicz turned their teams’ attention to defence and as Ballarat increased their pressure Geelong crumbled allowing Ballarat to record a 40-27 win to advance to the grand Final.

The Grand Final was another solid game for Ballarat defensively and opposition Moe struggled to get any momentum going.

Ballarat dominated across all aspects of the match and ran away winners 54-43.

“Our strength was the ability to keep moving into a higher gear in every game and at the end of day we just ran out games better than the other teams.” Clark explained.

The other pleasing aspect from Coach Clark from the weekend was to be able to use all ten players and rotate to keep all players fresh after 8 games leading into the Grand Final.

 

Ballarat under 12 Boys

The  Miners Under 12 boys also competed on the weekend, but unfortunately were defeated by Bendigo who was eventual runner up of Future Stars in the quarter final 16 points.

Coach Daniel Sutton was proud of the way the boys played and also made mention of the great talent at this level throughout country Victoria.

Boys Results.

Ballarat 52 d  Churchill 32

Ballarat 66 d Benalla 19

Ballarat 49 d Western Port 33

Horsham 47 d Ballarat 34

Bellarine 44 d Ballarat 24

Ballarat 40 d Echuca 28

Ballarat 32 d Geelong 29

Quarter Final Bendigo 46 d Ballarat 30.

 

Bellarine went onto win the Under 12 boys Future Stars weekend.

All Ballarat coaches were impressed  in how both boys and girls teams have developed during the past 8 months.