By JARROD POTTER
BIGGER, strong and wiser the second time around, Mason Peatling had the ultimate end to his junior representative basketball journey – winning a second national championship.
Taking his place once again in the Victoria Navy line-up, Peatling, 18, from Berwick, was one of sixth Victorians to go back-to-back at the Basketball Australia Under-20 Championships after a 91-61 grand final victory over Victoria White.
The second championship was made all the more sweet for the Dandenong Rangers forward/centre as he shared it with so many familiar faces from his inaugural 2015 Victorian campaign.
“It felt fantastic – great to do it with the same bunch of guys that went around last year,” Peatling said.
“It’s funny, the whole year they’re your competitors, but you come together for a couple of months and play together for a week, then you’re champions forever and you remember that.
“Second time around… we had the same coach, same assistant coach and team manager and physio – so it was special to do it with them again and it’s the last time to do that for most of us.
“Even though it was back-to-back, it was the last time for a lot of us, too, which is special in itself.”
Peatling said part of his great on-court efforts came from a year in the Rangers’ SEABL ranks – as taking the big defensively assignments last season did a world of good for the dual national-champion.
“It was a bit of a different tournament than last year – coming into it I was a lot better prepared physically,” Peatling said.
“I sort of looked around and there weren’t any SEABL imports to guard or anything like that – I think SEABL has definitely prepared me really well for this tournament and there was nothing that I wasn’t capable of handling.”
Coming off the bench, Peatling’s task was more defensive than score-driven and the 200cm relished the opportunity to square off against the rest of the nation’s best scorers.
He took on the tougher challenges, with his main defensive highlight coming against South Australia where he racked up 15 points but, more importantly, he helped to turn a seven-point three-quarter-time deficit into a 98-86 victory.
His tallies were irrelevant; Peatling only sought out team glory.
“The thing about my tournament, there wasn’t one particular game where everything sort of happened – there were games where I scored three or four points, or even none, but I did everything I had to for the team,” Peatling said.
“I didn’t stuff the stat sheet in any particular game but that one (South Australia) showed my emphasis, my intensity and what I needed to do for us to win a national championship.
“I felt that when I was on the court my defensive presence really helped us and with the added responsibility I probably performed a little bit better individually.”
Fellow Rangers Matt Owies and Chloe Bibby also reaped national championship victories in a very successful week for the Victorians.
For now Peatling is back at Dandenong until the SEABL bye round and hopes to take whatever he can from the next few months before jetting off to the states for his freshman season with Eastern Washington University.
