Hi everyone,

,

What a busy period we've had lately with holidays and representative teams! We have some exciting news to share regarding our young athletes.

Under 12 Representative players

First off, we are thrilled to announce that 18 boys and 9 girls have successfully made it into the Under 12 representative teams. There were 4 boys’ teams and 2 girls’ team which means Rockets averaged 4.5 players in every representative team. I would like to thank our coaches and Coordinators for all the work they do in supporting our players and parents so that their time with us is fulfilling and enjoyable.

Congratulations to the following players: Jack Graham, Vito Chuang, Sebastian Mutambirwa, Zakanya Emara, Jordan Greeves, Austin Sun, Mali Ito, Bowen Peng, Jayden Zhang, Jayden Ng, Tyus Tetevano, Patrick Zhong. Marc Lau, Henry Kao, Leo Pimpinella, Darren Zhou, George Zhang, Sam Morrison,

and our girls Willow Clark – Creed, Luumi Grant, Tilda Warren, Brooklyn Leuteie, Charlotte Zhang, Paddi Bakhit – Indeche, Alba Hauiti, Heylee Peng, Ruby Skipage.

For those who tried out for representative basketball this season but did not make it, please remember that this does not reflect on your abilities. It simply means that there were many talented boys in your position, or they were looking for particular skills or someone was a bit faster or more experienced and older. I have been on representative panels and maybe they don’t get it right every time, but it is their opinion at that particular point in time. In this selection process there were almost 40 boys who did not make it so there were a lot of players in that group.

I would encourage you to seek feedback, which will help you identify areas to work on moving forward and try again next season plus it will help your club team. We do have a few things planned for later on in the year which we hope you can participate in and as the year goes on, we will inform everyone.

Future Development Program (FDP)

A special shout-out goes to Margaret Grigorov , who made the Future Development Program (FDP) team. She is the only girl from Southwest to achieve this prestigious spot this year—what an incredible accomplishment! We also have a coach in the program Teasa Televano and here role in Rockets is with Di look after our U8/10 training, Di Lama’s other role is looking after a lot of the representative teams at Southwest. As you see we have high level coaches all the way down to U8 and U10

Outside of Basketball

Additionally, we want to congratulate another outstanding member of Rockets, Mack Utai, who just competed in the 50 to 54 age group for CrossFit and secured first place in Queensland. Mack will now be competing internationally in this age group—well done!

Winter coming

In other news, we are having long-sleeve T-shirts made for winter, which should arrive in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Wishing you all a fantastic week ahead!

Kind Regards,

Mark