TAMWORTH has become a representative basketball mecca this season as another five junior Thunderbolts teams prepare for today’s opening round of the Division 1 Northern Junior League with the home court advantage at the Sports Dome.
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Several Tamworth sides have already played in the Division 2 NJL, which was held here last month, while another three local sides have stepped up to the Country Premier League, the first round also hosted in Tamworth a few weeks ago with great success.
This weekend will also be the final time all Tamworth sides are playing together, until the NJL returns to the The Dome for Tamworth to host the finals series of both divisions over one weekend in October to cap a big representative year.
This weekend will see Tamworth’s U12, U14 and U18 boys’ sides compete, as well as the U12s and U16s girls’ side and Tamworth administrator Peter McDonald is expecting some big games.
“The U18 boys will be really strong after only just missing out on the CPL,” McDonald said.
“The U14 boys also almost went to the CPL before deciding on Division 1.”
The U16 girls’ side is a great example of the depth of talent in the region, the Tamworth second side good enough to play Division 1 with the top side playing CPL.
“The U12s are all new teams so it is always interesting to see what we get,” McDonald said.
“All the sides were picked in October last year and have been training hard since.
“Every side made the finals last year so we are hoping to do that again at least.”
Games will kick off at 8am both mornings with the final game at 8pm tonight before the carnival wraps up at 1pm tomorrow.
The Thunderbolts will be holding a Presidents Shout at the Diggers after play tomorrow to hand out MVP Awards and some other gongs after all sides have played the first round of their respective competitions.
This is only the second year that the Thunderbolts have participated in the highly competitive CPL, and so far they couldn’t be travelling much better.
The U16 boys and U14 girls have each won all three first-round games, the boys even beating heavyweights Newcastle for the perfect start, while the girls showed they know how to finish by winning two of their three games by less than a goal.
The U16 girls only just missed the perfect start themselves, dropping one game but winning the other two to be well on track early in the season.
The next round will be a combined northern and southern conference round, with the southern heavyweights presenting new dangers to the Thunderbolts.
“We beat Newcastle in the first round so hopefully we can give it to Illawarra and a few others,” McDonald said.
