Trainee Jesse - Under 18s Basketball

The under 18’s basketball state classics was held at Toowoomba on the 29th of June to the 3rd of July. And it was an exciting week, many teams competed such as: Southern districts, Gold coast, Brisbane, Logan, Townsville, Bunderberg, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Mackay, Cairns, Gladstone, Maroochydore, Noosa, Redlands and Rockhampton. Of all these teams played hard to earn their spots in the state classics. I play for southern districts and my team won the div 2 state title playing against some really good teams along the way. Starting of the week on our Monday games we were up against Ipswich and Bunderberg, strongly taking out Ipswich 78-62, and smashing Bunderberg 115-40. Everyone played really well, and I was top scorer for round one averaging 20 points in the first round against Ipswich and Bunderberg. We were all excited for our next games on Tuesday, knowing that we will be up against two very good teams in the second round. On Tuesday we came up against Townsville and Toowoomba, both teams were strong but not strong enough to hold us back from beating both teams on that day, Townsville got up to a good start over us starting with their best shooter on the court scoring 4 three pointers in the first quarter, but our heads didn’t drop all we needed was to play hard defense and smart offense, and that was just the plan we needed to take over Townsville and beat them by 10 points in the final quarter 70-60. Toowoomba was our next team to verse they had a pretty good starting line up with some very athletic players on court, rebounding and strong defence, but with hard defense and offense Toowoomba could not stop us from taking them over and to win strongly with a 71-45 victory. We were undefeated and we had made the Quarter finals, and we were pumped to verse the next team which was Noosa and they also were undefeated in the competition, and we knew that Noosa would like to go undefeated throughout the competition. When it came to game time, both Noosa and my team were warming up hard and getting ready for a tough showdown, throughout the game Noosa put up some good shots and rebounding well in the first half, when it came to half time, we all came together and we all wanted to finish this game with a win, and that’s just what we did, Noosa couldn’t stop us from taking them out with another strong win 76-59. We had won 5 games to nil, and made the semi finals. Our semi final was against Logan, Logan has been our rivals since we have versed them in the southern cup competition, and we knew they would try and take us out of the competition. Logan had 4 very strong players that could shoot inside and out. But we weren’t going to go down without a fight, we managed to put their best three point shooter in foul trouble which cause their coach to take him off the court, short of risking him to foul out and sit out for the rest of the game, that gave us an advantage, with their strongest player out of the game, we could go ahead and take them out, and when the final siren went off for full time, we all jumped for joy, we beat Logan 83-76 and we had a chance of winning the state classics. Unfortunately Noosa beat Brisbane Silver in their semi, and we were against Noosa once again but this time for the state title, Final time was here, and we were all excited, and absolutely pumped for the final game. During the game Noosa come out strong beating us in quarter 1 2 and 3 by only 2 points, it was the final quarter, and our final chance to secure victory, Noosa was going to give us everything they got to make sure we don’t beat them in the final quarter, we both went out hard and strong in the final quarter, Noosa just holding on, until a time out was called by our coach with 5 minutes to go, and during those last 5 minutes we went all out, crashing boards running our offensive plays, and we passed Noosa and kept on playing hard even for the final minute, Noosa was down by 11 and they could not comeback at us in the final minute. As the clock ticked down to its final seconds our bench stood up and when the siren sounded we all jumped with happiness and joy beating Noosa 72-61, and we were all so happy with our results during the classics, we had won the state title and went the whole competition undefeated. We congratulated Noosa on their efforts and for a tough game. After the game, we received our medals and certificates and the trophy. It was an exciting week we all had fun and enjoyed playing against the teams we versed. we assure all the other teams will work hard for next year’s classics, and so will we, and hopefully we can take out next year’s title as state champions.