Three of Mount Gambier’s talented junior basketball squad, Lachlan Hunter, Tenille Gray and Brenna McKay recorded fine personal achievements at the 2014 Australian Under 16 Basketball Championships played in Geelong last week.

They joined more than 280 of Australia’s basketball stars of tomorrow in the highest level of national competition.

The SA Country Men’s team finished with 6^th ranking of the 14 participants, probably a place or two higher than predicted prior to the championships. On the other hand the SA Country Women’s ranking of 7^th is creditable but perhaps slightly below expectations going into the nationals. The form of the two teams over the week was contrasting; the Men started slowly but then improved match by match, while the Women were most impressive early, but were unable to maintain this level as pressure mounted.

Both SA Country teams finished fourth in their respective pools with 3/3 win/loss records. The Women’s loss to ACT however proved costly in terms of pool rankings.

The SA Country Men scored possibly their best win of the week by defeating Victoria Country 56-52 in the 5-8 playoff, but then went down to SA Metro, 82-88, in a gallant performance for a final ranking of 6^th position.

The Women however could not get over an inconsistent NSW Metro 41-43, after leading for the majority of minutes in the 5-8 playoff game. They bounced back to turn the tables on ACT and grab 7^th ranking. The SA Country Women produced a strong 4^th quarter to clinch the 58-49 point win. Tenille Gray and Brenna McKay led the scoring for the game and were prominent in the match winning final quarter effort.

Brenna and Tenille returned home with very impressive individual statistics. Brenna led the Women’s Championships in rebounds, averaging 16.8 per game for the six minor round games and finished with an outstanding overall figure of 12.6 per game. It is interesting to note that the Championship leader in rebounds for the Men’s competition was Samuel Waardenburg of New Zealand with a statistic of 13.1 rebounds per game, highlighting the impact of Brenna’s work during the week.

 Brenna and Tenille led the scoring for SA Country with an average of 12 points per game and in positions 9^th and 10^th in the overall competition numbers. Brenna also finished in the top 20 of the average assists stats for the Championships.

Lachlan Hunter was the quiet achiever in the Men’s team. He played big minutes and consistently had a “fair dinkum” go, basing his efforts on defence and team structure. His somewhat modest statistics do not truly reflect his effective contributions towards the team’s performances. Lachlan’s team-mate Ky Matthews-Hampton led the Championship scoring average with 18 points per game.       

The 2014 champions are the SA Metro Women and NSW Country Men. SA Metro Women defeated Queensland South and NSW Country easily accounted for Victoria Metro Men in the Gold Medal games.