By Tara Murray
The Ivor Burge Basketball national championships turned out to be a good one for those connected with Melton and Bacchus Marsh Specialist Hoops.
Specialist Hoops founder and coach Emily Attard coached the women’s team to back-to-back national titles.
Mollie van der Linden, who is involved in Specialist Hoops as a coach, was a development coach under Attard.
Twins Patrick Getson and Jaime-Lee Getson were in the men’s and women’s gold medal teams respectively.
Attard said it was pretty special to win gold again.
“It was pretty surreal,” she said. “It was great to know all the work and the preparation had paid off for the girls.
“They have improved over the past 12 months and been able to maintain what they had done.”
Attard said it was different this time round being the head coach having been there once before.
She said it was easier this time round with plenty of goals and expectations going into the event.
“We wanted to bring back gold,” she said. “It was about player development with the players as individuals and as members of a team.
“We were focusing on things that we could control as a team. That’s always a mental challenge in Ivor Burge.”
Attard said it was a good challenge for van der Linden to be a development coach.
She said it gave her a good understanding of the national program and allowed her to develop some more skills.
“We work with diverse athletes and you can see what works and what goes into the back end,” Attard said.
“We want to develop education and coaching.”
Attard said it was really good to see Patrick and Jaime-Lee get their opportunity at this level.
She said he didn’t know these opportunities were around for a long time. Patrick scored two points in the grand final that Victoria won 116-51.
“Patrick was finally able to play basketball that was competitive,” she said.
“It’s been a long time coming. He never knew about he program and was excited for him. It’s his main sport and have him put work in and go through the try outs and be able to competitive at a national level.
“Jaime-Lee (who scored 14 points in the grand final) did the same thing and was able to support her brother.”
Attard said while it’s now a break from the national program, they were working on ways to allow for development in the next 12 months.
For Specialist Hoops, which runs in Melton and Bacchus Marsh, its just started a brand new program, Play 23.
The program is focuses on integrating main stream athletes into the program to help develop athelies to work together to help further develop skills and maybe get to that next level
