Taking on the world
Indigenous talent puts Cairns on international stage
BASKETBALL CAIRNS will provide almost half the Australian Indigenous Basketball All Stars team for the upcoming World Indigenous Basketball Challenge.
Recently retired Cairns Marlins games record holder Curt Ahwang, current Marlins co-captain Aaron Bin Tahal, Denzel Kennedy and Marshall Ware will all represent the Far North in Canada in August at the tournament.
It will be Australia’s premier Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team’s first trip to the WIBC.
“It is a great opportunity,” Bin Tahal said.
“It is always special to represent my people and where I come from.
“There is a lot of talent out there around Australia and it is great to have them all come together.”
The All Stars will join 15 other invited men’s sides in Vancouver, doing battle over four-days for the title as the world’s number one Indigenous basketball nation.
All Stars coach Joel Khalu is more than happy with the squad he has assembled.
“Curt Ah Wang is a 238game, Reece Craigie (Sydney) Tidjane Diop (Mackay) Tyson Demos (Illawarra) Verle Williams Jnr. (Brisbane) Zachariah Bourne (Gold Coast) 13-season player and just won his fourth QBL title with the Cairns Marlins, and will rejoin the Indigenous squad after last playing for the All Stars in 2014,” Khalu said.
“We’re excited about this talented group of players and their potential to do very well in Canada,
“We’re missing a couple of our regular faces, guys like Cairns’s Deba George and the Cedar brothers in Chris and Michael, who due to their Australian domestic playing commitments were unavailable.
“However, we’re confident the players that have been identified can step up as needed.”
The team has a two-day training camp in Brisbane in early August before departing for Vancouver.
Following the World Indigenous Basketball Challenge, Kennedy will return to Valley City State University in North Dakota to begin the second year of his scholarship.
The fourth annual transTasman Series against the New Zealand Maori Men’s national team is set to take place in Cairns later this year.