Taking a shot at hoop dreams
With only a few training sessions, the odds were against a Marlborough girls’ basketball team when they travelled to the South Island Primary Tournament. The other teams were taller and looked liked they’d been training longer. But in the end, it was the Marlborough team of Year 5 and 6 girls that came out on top at the three-onthree tournament in Canterbury. Co-coach Farishta Peterson-ihaka, who only got the call up a few weeks before the tournament, put the win down to the girls co-operation, and listening to the limited coaching they’d had. ‘‘If I hadn’t taught them how to come to the ball and to keep possession it might have been a different story,’’ Peterson-ihaka said. ‘‘With three on three, you need to split the space. ‘‘And they listened, they did it, and I watched as all of the other teams watched us, and then they started to play a similar way, because it worked. They’re a bright little bunch, this lot.’’ The tournament was held over Anzac weekend in Rangiora. The girls said they enjoyed spending time with each other and ‘‘drinking lots of chocolate milk’’. The team were playing three-on-three basketball for the first time, a change from their usual five-on-five. Captain Kaiya Waitai said it was different because every time there was a foul, double-dribble, or the ball went out, they had to pass from the top. ‘‘Sometimes we were shooting, and we couldn’t quite get it in, you just had to keep going and going,’’ Waitai said. Zaraya Wilson said three-on-three felt harder at times because it could be faster than five-on-five. Going into the final, they were nervous because the North Canterbury team they were playing had been unbeaten, and they had lost in pool play. But they also knew they had nothing to lose. The final ended up going into overtime. ‘‘It was nerve-wracking, because we were shooting, and they weren’t all going in,’’ Wilson said. But after they made a shot in overtime, they kept going strong and came out on top.