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Junior A's: Premiership Report

Zone 3 Secondary School Junior Premiership Tournament Report

 
The Junior A Team set off to New Plymouth confident they could win the Junior Secondary School Premierreship title. In 2008 HBHS was the first Hawkes Bay team to ever win this prestigious tournament. We hoped to repeat this in 2010.

We started off the tournament well as you can see in our results and continued to improve especially defensively as the tournament went on. Defense was the call at every timeout or break during each game and this set a solid base for our team to come out with wins because we knew we had enough firepower offensively over any team there. We beat some big schools there with great reputations with roles twice the size of ours. Our team tactics were superb running sublime moves to give every player in our team opportunities to score. Every player was on the scoring sheet after every game and we always had 4 or 5 players scoring in double figures. This showed our unselfishness.
 
Mataeus Marsh, Ash Robinson, Soul Sadler , and Dion Tuhi really stepped up after Harlan Soloman rolled his ankle in the first game and missed the next three pool games.
 
POOL GAME RESULTS

• Game 1 – Beat New Plymouth Boys  71-62
• Game 2 – Beat Hutt Valley High 88-78
• Game 3 – Beat Wellington College 65-45
• Game 4 – Beat Hawera High 71-44

Harlan was back for the semi-final and helped lead with Geoffrey Tuapata-Heather to beat a huge Palmerston North team. Hastings Boys demolished their size with skillfull teamwork and won 91-53.  The Final brought us to the major match-up against St. Pats College Wellington. The only two junior teams in New Zealand that were unbeaten at Junior level in 2010 were described as a fitting final.
 
We came out of the blocks great scoring first. Geoffrey was great when he was on the court penetrating, scoring, and rebounding but when we had to save him because of foul trouble it really hurt our team.
 
This gave St Pats the opportunity to gain confidence and during that first half it sometimes seemed like they were making every tough shot they put up. The half time break was used to stress the importance of not to become a team in ‘panic mode’. Improve our defense by taking away their scoring strengths and sticking to our game plan. Their pressure had moved us away from what we were good at. This was no surprise as our lead-up to the final had really thrown no tests at us. Our team started to take it strong to the hoop with St Pats committing a lot of fouls putting us to the free-throw line. We failed to capitalize on our opportunities only hitting 9 of 24 free throws. Geoffrey always tried to help his team mates when they got beaten but ultimately this was to only his demise committing his fifth foul ending his game at the start of the fourth quarter.
 
Harlan Soloman carried the load and put the team on his shoulders as he penetrated aggressively and skillfully scoring 43 points, and 22 rebounds for the game.  The game had ten lead changes and it came down to the last quarter when St Pats had the ball with 28 seconds left and possession 2 points down. They past it into their post player who made a contested lay-up to tie the game up at 64 all. 12 seconds left and the ball was in Harlans hands. He beat his man and continued to the basket where 3 players were waiting for him like a brick wall. He decided to pass to Soul Sadler who had to shoot with 2 seconds left. He let the shot go but it hit the hoop and bounced off with the final hooter sounding.
 
Now it was overtime which lasts for six minutes. During this period Mataeus and Harlan fouled out leaving our less experienced players out there to finish the game. Exhausting our team resources St Pats took over to win 80-77.
Coach Thomas Bartlett says ‘This team has all the talent to go to the next level and win Senior Nationals. But it takes a three year commitment of unselfishness and putting the team first. If this team becomes even closer over this time and their training ethic keeps on improving, there is no doubt that the ultimate goal of Senior National Champoins will come to fruition.’
 
2010 Junior Team thanks all people who have helped them on their journey. These include parents, HBHS staff, and John Bond for his time spent in the Assistant role and his willingness to help the team whenever possible.  We couldn’t have done it without all of you.