Kristy Reed – Sport Co-ordinator and PDHPE Teacher

Early in the term, very competitive trials were held for places in the prestigious Firsts Basketball team. After the departure of the very successful Year 12 basketball team, it was time to select a new generation of players for the top team in the School.

The first challenge for the newly formed team was the annual Emanuel Moriah Basketball Challenge. Since this challenge was initiated a few years back, Emanuel has dominated the competition and the new Emanuel team, of quite young players, had a reputation to maintain.

The series lived up to expectations and proved to be the most exciting of recent years. Moriah won the first match by nine points, with the Emanuel team playing well, but lacking the experience of the older Moriah team.

In the second match, which was held at Moriah College, the Emanuel team played very well, with outstanding performances from Noah Klein and Matthew Joffe. The challenge was now evened up, with an impressive win by the Emanuel boys.

The build-up to the final and deciding match of the series, to be hosted by Emanuel was exciting, with the team training well. The parent and student audience from both schools would agree that it was one of the toughest, closest and exciting school games to spectate. For the 40 minutes of the game there was no more than a few points between the two teams. With 1 minute 50 seconds on the clock, Emanuel was leading 33-30. However, the match was evened up by a three-point shot from Moriah, which proved to be the turning point of the game with Emanuel going down by four points.

Jake Hyman played an outstanding game and it was pleasing to see our younger players, Jesse Waller and Ariel Odes rise to the occasion.

I was very impressed with the performance of this newly formed team and the commitment and determination showed by all of the players. This team certainly has a strong future ahead of them.

Thank you to Hank Foster, the School’s very experienced coach, for his excellent work preparing this team. Congratulations to Jordan Behr, Matthew Bozic, Ethan De Melo, Zac Greenberg, Jake Hyman, Matthew Joffe, Noah Klein, Blake Nixon, Ariel Odes and Jesse Waller for representing the School with such pride.