Zitina Aokuso, Inspiring the Young
The start of July saw 100 Queensland athletes and 30 Queensland coaches jet off to the USA to attend the 2017 Basketball Queensland USA Emerging Team Tour.
The 5 boy’s teams spent 9 days and the 5 girl’s teams spent 10 days in the US attending high school basketball tournaments, participating in elite training sessions, touring universities and seeing all the sights that Orange County, LA has to offer.
The BQ Emerging Team Program is designed to provide development opportunities for our bottom age athletes who haven’t had the opportunity to represent QLD on a state team. An intricate part of the emerging team program is the development of both our coaches and athletes in the QLD style-of-play. The USA Emerging Team Tour allows both coaches and athletes to be fully immersed in the QLD style-of-play in a foreign environment.
The 2016 BQ Emerging Team Program produced 12 athletes who were selected for the 2017 U16 State Teams. That is 25% of our U16 State Teams. _ of these athletes were on the north and south boys teams who recently won Gold and Silver respectively at the 2017 U16 Nationals held in Perth.
Athletes and Coaches attended a variety of activities throughout their 1.5week stay in the US, some of these include:
- All athletes and coaches, visited State-of-the-Art training facility, Shoot360. Basketball Queensland was fortunate enough to secure the services of, NBA Assistant Coach of the LA Clippers, Dave Severns, who took the boys and girls through an elite training session, introducing them to the modern concepts of play.
- Some athletes had the opportunity to go and watch the Washington Mystics training session as they prepared to play the LA Sparks.
- Some of the teams had the opportunity to go and watch a WNBA game – Washington Mystics V LA Sparks.
- All athletes and coaches visited Pepperdine University coaching staff. The group was given a tour of the campus, had lunch in the student cafeteria and soaked up some of the ‘waves’ atmosphere in Malibu, California.
- On July 4th, several of our emerging teams were lucky enough to secure tickets to the LA Dodgers V Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game, and were treated to a spectacular firework show to celebrate the American Independence Day.
- All teams could squeeze in trips to both Universal Studios and Disneyland.
- And finally, all teams had an opportunity to be trained by NBA/WNBA skills coach Jason Wright. Jason held a 2-hour elite training skills session. This was a tour favourite!
The USA Emerging Team Tour would not be complete without a few basketball tournaments in which the teams versed some of the LA’s best High School and Club teams. Teams competed in Open Gym Premier Tournament and California Storm Tournament.
The five boys emerging teams played a total of 7 games, a mixture of high school and club teams, and the overall results were fairly solid. Although the results did improve towards the end of the tournament.
The five girls emerging teams played in 2 club tournaments and also against some high school teams, securing a total of 10 games. The girls’ team results were very good – we had one team win a tournament and several teams play in the championship games.
This was the first year that all emerging teams were very competitive in the tournaments. The coaching staff received a number of US coaches remarketing how competitive our teams have become since we first started attending the tournaments three years ago.
Basketball Queensland would like to thank all the athletes and coaches who attended the USA Emerging Team Tour and made it such a great success! We look forward to next year!
Related posts
