ESDP
Term 1 2025 kicked off with our biggest ever enrolment in the basketball program with over 120 students involved. While this is great for the program it presented some logistical challenges in ensuring all our classes had appropriate coaching and court space to ensure opportunity and development for our students.
Eleanor Sharp has joined the staff on a full-time basis bringing both a wealth of basketball experience and a psychology qualification which adds some depth in expertise to the basketball program.
Former TC basketball student Gabe Hadley has also joined our assistant coach group. Gabe returns to Melbourne from two seasons in the NBL with the Brisbane Bullets, he will be playing for the Eltham Wildcats in NBL this season. He joins other TC graduates Tayha Watkins and Gene Vasiliadis on our coaching staff who offer both basketball experience and lived experience as both TC students and basketball program graduates.
Our classes now utilize the court at TC as well as 2 courts at Templestowe Leisure Centre and Bulleen stadium as our needs often require 3 courts.
In the final week of term 1 we met with local Federal Parliament representative Keith Wolahan to lobby for Government support for the construction of 3 courts on the TC oval. We have been meeting with local, State and Federal politicians on and off now for about six years in the hope of getting a new stadium for the school. We will continue to work towards this goal.
The basketball program has had many friendly games and tournaments with other schools during term 1, these have included Berwick Secondary College, Rowville Secondary and Box Hill Secondary College. The games have been in various age groups and our students have competed favorably with these other basketball schools.
We also competed in the Basketball Victoria 3x3 competitions for Under 15, 17 and 20 age groups and I’m happy to say that TC has qualified teams for the finals in all male and female categories. The finals of the 3x3 competitions will be held in week 2 of next term at the State Basketball Centre.
Next term we will also compete in the Victorian Secondary Schools Challenge (VSSC) which is a series of one day round robin tournaments aimed at the general school basketball level. We will enter multiple teams in these events with priority given to court time and opportunity at the tournaments.
Early next term we will also sit down with the students and go over some goals for the remainder of the year. We use the data we collect from game days, shooting tests and our physical testing to set some specific skill goals and will set some more concepts of the game and character goals as part of this process. All this will go onto the students Individual Performance Plans (IPP’s) that parents are able to view on Teams.
It's been a busy term one with all our new students settling in and past students building on their skills, we are very happy with the effort each group is giving us and we are looking forward to a great year.
Ian Stacker
