ESDP

The ESDP basketball year finished off 2024 with some great results in the basketball program.

Our Intermediate Boys became School Sport Victoria State Champions with an impressive win over Berwick Secondary College.

The Intermediate girls also competed in the finals before being knocked out in the semifinals.

We also had a series of friendly games during term 4, the first of these was our Intermediate and Junior Boys against a visiting team from Queensland, the Jorden Page Basketball Academy. Both teams had comfortable wins in games played on the TC campus.

Another friendly for the term was against Donvale Christan School where our Year 8 boys were divided into two teams for games on their Donvale campus. One team won and one team lost in close games.

The final friendly games for the term were in tournaments arranged by Berwick Secondary college, the first for Intermediate age teams was played at the State Basketball Centre and the second for Junior age players was held at Mullum Mullum Stadium, all our teams had a fun day and competed well against teams from around the area.

A highlight of the term was a speaking engagement, hosted by Templestowe College, by WNBA Championship Winning coach and National Women’s team coach Sandy Brondello. Sandy spoke of her basketball journey and what it takes to succeed up to the highest levels of basketball.

We opened the talk to the general public and also had basketball schools Box Hill Secondary College and Maribyrnong Secondary College bring bus loads of students to attend the event.

Sandy’s son Brody Lange moved to Australia this year from their residence in the USA to attend the basketball program at TC.

The final event for 2024 was our Senior Boys and Intermediate Girls attending the National Schools Championships on the Gold Coast Dec 1st to 6th. The standard of competition was very high, and we now make this event a regular on our calendar for our older students.  

The girls did a fantastic job to make the semifinals losing to Rowville Secondary college and then came up short in the bronze medal game losing narrowly to Berwick Secondary College. The girls had plenty of injuries and it was a credit to all who hit the court who gave it their best shot, 4th in the Country still a great result.

The Senior boys were up against it from the start with a lack of height, a determining factor in all our games. We came fifth in our pool and then beat the team who finished fifth in the other pool by 20 points to end up 9th overall. The boys worked hard all week but were the shortest team in the competition but showed great heart throughout the week.

Another great year for the ESDP program, the 11th year at TC and next year we have our biggest ever intake of new students into the basketball program. The growth continues and all the coaches look forward to another great year in 2025

By Ian Stacker