By ROY WARD
DANDENONG Rangers junior sides won two gold medals and made four grand finals at the National Junior Classic basketball tournament in Melbourne over the long weekend.
The Classic is an invitation-only tournament which brings together the best club sides in Australia and the Rangers’ under-18 girls and under-14 boys won gold medals in their respective competitions.
The under-12 boys and under-14 girls won silver medals after going down in their respective grand finals.
The Rangers were one of the few clubs to have teams selected in all age groups for the tournament which has boys’ and girls’ divisions in under-12, under-14, under-16 and under-18 competitions.
Rangers under-18 girls coach Paul Flynn said his side’s victory was a “huge thrill”, especially as they ran out to a 20-point advantage at half-time in the gold medal game before beating North Sydney 56-44.
“We haven’t really been able to come together as a group too often this season because of players having state and national junior team commitments, ” Flynn said. “Playing six games over the weekend, it was a good opportunity to rebuild our chemistry together. We got progressively better over the weekend and that was highlighted by the grand final.”
Rangers centre Amanda Meinking was dominant throughout the tournament and was named grand final most valuable player.
“Amanda was definitely a focal point in our offence and she gives us something many teams aren’t able to combat,” Flynn said.
With the Rangers under-18s only in the early stages of their season in junior representative basketball, Flynn said the classic would prove to be a valuable part of their development as a team.
Rangers under-14 boys’ coach Steve Blackley praised his side for its perseverance after it came back from trailing Altona Gators by nine points at half-time in its gold medal game to come back and win 66-61.
“We had a really good start to the third quarter and were up at three-quarter-time, then managed to hold on,” Blackley said.
Bottom-age forward Jack Perry was named grand final most valuable player after scoring 18 points. Perry is no relation to current Rangers senior and junior coach Darren Perry.
“It was a huge effort from a bottom-age player but it showed how even our team is. All 10 of our players played and we had a number of different top scorers over the tournament,” Blackley said.
The Rangers boys also did well to back up and play the final on Queen’s Birthday Monday after playing three matches on the Sunday.
“It was a brutal day for young kids to play through,” Blackley said.
“But overall it was a good thing for us to have gone through as a team because we have started the Friday night season 9-0 [win-loss] and have not had a close game yet so we needed those hard games and will learn a lot from it.”
The Rangers’ under-14 boys’ and girls’ teams have also qualified for the under-14 national club championships later this year, with the boys needing to travel to Darwin and the girls to Ballarat.
The club and those teams will soon start fundraising to help meet the travel costs for the two tournaments.
