
History made – first ever St Michael’s team to make the National Schools Championships
We wish our Senior A Girls Basketball team the very best of luck as they travel to the Gold Coast for the Australian School Basketball Championships! The Senior A Basketball team secured a spot at the championships following an impressive victory against Henley High, making history of being the first St Michael’s team to make the championships. This significant win not only earned them a coveted place in the championships but also solidifies their status as strong contenders in this prestigious event.
Congratulations to Sophie B, Summah C, Sienna G, Lilli H, Coco H, Chloe M, Paige M, Zahlia N, Mollie N, Tayla P and Coach, Joe Noone who will travel to the Gold Coast this weekend to begin the competition.
Principal Tony Daley says, “It has been fantastic to watch the team develop throughout the year, and they’ve worked very hard to get to this position. These students are not just talented athletes, but have become excellent role models in all facets of College life. This achievement shows the strength of the Basketball program here at St Michael’s as our U15 girls team also made the State Finals this year”
“We’ve had girls here at St Michael’s from Year 8-12, over the past 15 years, and we’re very proud of the girls’ achievements across all areas at St Michael’s – we haven’t looked back. This achievement with the Girls Basketball team is just one of the successes we’ve had this year in Girl’s sport. Our Open Netball team won 3 Grand finals this year (the Statewide Knockout Netball Championships, defeating Henley High. This was off the back of their SACSSGSA Grand Final win against Sacred Heart College, along with winning the Waverly International Netball Carnival at the end of Term 2 in Melbourne). And our Open Football Team also reached the Grand Final for the fourth consecutive year and were runners up this year”
“We congratulate all of the students in the team, we know they’ll do St Michael’s proud”, Principal Tony Daley conveys.
This is a whole team effort, and we are so proud of them all on their achievement, and the team has also had some fantastic individual player achievements that should be highlighted.
Coco recently represented Australia in The Sapphires Basketball team at the FIBA U/16 Women’s Asian Championship in Jordan. Australia went on to blitz the championship, remaining undefeated with 6 wins to their name and some impressive scores on the board. Coco led the team’s overall efficiency statistic and achieved the well-deserved title of top performer within the Australian team for 3 of the 6 games played.
For the upcoming National School Championships – stay tuned for updates and highlights via our Instagram stories, and to view the live stats during the competition, please save this link: https://schoolchamps.aus.basketball/live-stats/
Coach Joe Noone says, “School basketball is an interesting balancing act between everybody’s other commitments in club land and state programs and fitting school basketball into that can be a challenge, but we have worked through that and worked hard to qualify. The last month we’ve ramped up a fair bit with our training, and we know what we do well and we’re ready to see our hard work pay off.
It will be interesting to see who we’re playing next week. Quite a few schools have dedicated basketball programs and we’re probably one of the exceptions to that. There are some really talented girls in this age group in SA basketball, so any time we play another school it’s against those players.
Our team knows each other really well, between the 10 players there’s a mix between West Adelaide, Forestville and Sturt. They’ve got good skills and they work really hard for each other. We’ve got some talent but I assume we’re going in as the underdogs. The players have said they want to make it to the last day, for me it’s about taking it a game at a time. It’s about that first game on Monday morning and if we can get through that then we tackle the next opponent.
I think the school and the school community would be chuffed to see academically minded and highly successful sports females succeed. Being the first St Michael’s team to make the championships is a great thing, and the girls are super excited and super proud, and they want to continue doing the school a service and performing as best they can. I’ve known some of these girls since they first started playing so to see their growth is just amazing”, Noone says.