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Twice the success for junior Coasters

PORTLAND Coasters juniors wrapped up two big weekends of basketball after hosting back-to-back junior South West Classic tournaments.

This weekend saw the under-12 and under-14 teams go head-to-head after the under-16 and under-18 groups battled it out the weekend prior.

A highlight of the weekend competition was the under-14 boys Portland Coasters team, who defeated Hamilton in the grand final with a thrilling 53-51 victory.

It was a huge turn around from the young contingent who were beaten by 26 points by Hamilton earlier in the day on Sunday.

While Hamilton had plenty of height to use, Portland made the most of their ballhandling skill, breaking Hamilton’s press and scoring effectively.

Nason Lovett-Murray was a standout in the win, hitting 16 points while Patrick Impey scored 12 points.

The under-14 girls also had a successful tournament, making the grand final before going down to Hamilton, 48-35.

While on court success was a highlight of the two weekends, including an under-18 boys grand final weekend last weekend, the first-time format of two tournaments held across separate dates is something committee member Anna Impey says they’ll implement in the future.

“It honestly went so well for us, moving forward I think we’ll definitely continue doing two weekends,” she said.

“Usually it’s held over one weekend and we get about 70 teams – this year we had at least 122 teams take part over the two weekends which is incredible.

“It worked really well for families too because we were able to finish up games earlier than usual and I feel like it just made for a really smoothly run tournament.

“It wasn’t as crowded as it can sometimes get and we didn’t run behind at all, we were ahead of time for the most part.”

Impey said spreading the load across two weekends wouldn’t have been possible without people chipping in.

“It was such a big team effort, a huge shout out to all of our volunteers who helped out where they could, it was so great to see everyone put in,” she said.

One of the bigger highlights of the two weekends was the Portland Basketball Association hosting the Country Basketball League women’s semi final during the first tournament, where Portland defeated Horsham to lead into what eventually became a CBL grand final victory.

“We’ve already talked about how great it was to have the CBL game there and that we want to try and go one step further next year and hopefully get the grand final,” Impey said.

“It was such good support and so exciting for the kids and players to all be a part of it so we want to build on it against next year.”

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