Tight final game for our girls!

This year the West Coast Secondary School Senior Girls Basketball Tournament was hosted in Greymouth at our awesome Westland Rec Centre on Thursday 12th August.

Our team had just come away from the local basketball finals with a loss and wanted to make up for their performance. This talented group of young women have been training extremely hard with winter tournament week and nationals in their sights so the WCSS event was a great opportunity to play against other school teams.

Games were 8 minute quarters so teams needed to get into their work quickly. This year saw only four schools competing - Greymouth HS, Buller HS, John Paul II, Westland HS, as other schools were targeting other sports for 2021. With a small tournament it made for some great basketball across the board with teams giving it their all.

First game against John Paul II was a convincing win from our team, everything was clicking well and the team well and truely shook off the dust from their recent finals loss.

Next game against Westland HS was going to be an easier game for our side as WHS focuses more on their netball than basketball, however Westland still played some good basketball. Our team was just in a level of their own in this game making things look easy and points getting dropped from all over the court.

The final game of the day which ended up being the decider for 1st/2nd was against Buller HS. Buller have been our closest rivals in the Senior Girls Basketball for a number of years and everyone knew this game would not disappoint! It was even at the end of the first quarter, 13 points a piece. Second quarter we just crept ahead with a 6 point buffer 28 - 22, the team sustained a similar lead of 5 points going into the final quarter. Forth quarter was a thriller! Buller outscored our side 12 points to 6, however clutch play from Ella Mahuika scoring an important 3 pointer and a final free throw gave GHS the win by a single point! Fantastic game to watch!

Thank you and congratulations to Coach Matiu Wikaira for taking your team through in great fashion, the girls have learnt so much from you this season!

Also thank you to all of our referees and bench helpers throughout the day, we cannot host a tournament like this without your great help.