New leader looks to the future

NO GAP: Tamati Horua (left) and Kahn Grayson of Team Reg combine to keep Team Tom’s Stefan Pishief off the offensive boards in Draft League action.Picture by Darryl Crawford

This has been the second straight year in which sports bodies worked overtime because of Covid-19.

And when it comes to working overtime, no local outfit does that as well as the Gisborne Basketball Association.

A transformative year began with the election of a new leader, Kylie Turuwhenua-Tapsell, upon the return to New Plymouth of long-serving chairman Dwayne Tamatea.

Mainstays with the experience and drive of Tamatea take some replacing. The GBA committee took the baton and moved forward collaboratively.

“This year, we’ve made great progress as an organisation to ensure that we plan and grow,” Turuwhenua-Tapsell said.

“My highlight in terms of the game was seeing the response to our club ball and draft league competitions.

“There’s passion for and a desire to play ball in Te Tairawhiti. We just need to support people with the space and ability to play the game at any age, any stage.”

Seven GBA teams competed at the Basketball Pacific Mel Young Easter Classic in Tauranga. They began their four-day campaign on April 2 with 11 wins from 13 games.

Gisborne powerhouse Cody Tarei scored 46 points in the under-15 boys’ 93-86 win against Waikato Red in Game 1.

The GBA u13 girls won gold in the B section, the u15 girls, u13 boys and u11 girls all won silver, the u17 boys took bronze in the B section while the u11 boys were placed fourth and the u15 boys fifth.To have both boys’ and girls’ teams in the u11, u13 and u15 grades (70 players) at the Easter Classic speaks to the strength and commitment of the GBA to player, team and coach development in trying times.

Factor 20 coaches, managers and support staff in with the players — 90 people had a quality experience.

The boys’ secondary schools division of club ball and men’s Open B Grade were held at the John McFarlane Memorial Sports Centre of Gisborne Boys’ High School on Monday and Tuesday nights respectively while at the YMCA, women’s ball and the men’s Premier Grade also played out on Monday and Tuesday.

The 18 teams paid for three games a night for each section for 15 weeks, and that’s what they got. May 10 was opening night, with both the administration and teams again proving their ability to adapt to Covid-19. The finals — pushed out from August 30-31 to September 27-28 — were superb contests worthy of the occasion.

On September 27, coach David Glendenning’s Gisborne Boys’ High School Senior B team beat Shane McClutchie’s Campion College Juniors 62-50 and signed off as secondary schools’ champions at the Sports Centre.

Campion’s Allies Rangihuna put up 15 points, pipping Joel Akuhata-Brown of Boys’ High by one point to lead all scorers. McClutchie has given long service to Campion — in the selfless tradition of John McInnes and the late Fred Smith of their rugby arm — while Glendenning has been loyal to GBHS basketball.

On the same night at the YMCA, Turanga broke Ngati Porou’s three-year stranglehold on the women’s crown 50-44.

Peyton Riri, of Turanga, churned out 17 points in the showpiece. Bronya McMenamin again led the defending champions with tremendous heart and resilience, for 11 points.

Paare Ahuriri-Leach, whose Turanga crew beat the best team in the history of women’s ball here — they had won six of the past seven finals — had to dig deep without two of their biggest contributors (former Nelson Spark Hana Wilkinson, ruptured left Achilles; Alicia Kepa, work commitments).

The men’s Open B Grade final was a thriller between two of the section’s four new teams. The Bibs and Hustlers could not be separated in overtime and so chose to tie the final 52-all. The Bibs’ Tamati Horua poured in 28 points; the Hustlers’ Fraser Robb got 14. The Shed were placed third and Hawaiiki Hou sixth in their debut season.

Clubs such as Hawaiiki Hou draw new players, in particular youth, to the game (as did the Town Syndicate Oulaws, TSOL Brothers, in 2000 and the high-flying Munro Street in 2001).

Then two basketball worlds collided.

Premier Grade champions SE Systems and Green Up first met this year in the late game on opening night. First blood went to Green Up, 59-58. In Game 2 of Week 4, Systems’ club captain Adrian Sparks beat the buzzer for the first time in 35 seasons. With three seconds left to play, Harley Phillips — left of the Green Up basket, on the baseline — inbounded the ball to Sparks at the knuckle. Sparks then made history.

Sebastian Wilson of GBHS A led all scorers in all games on opening night with 23 points, in Gisborne Boys’ 60-40 Game 1 Premier Grade win against The Massive Marauders.

Raenin Pihema of Lytton High School led all scorers in Week 15 with 31 in Ritana’s 101-36 win against GBHS Junior B in the playoff for fifth in the secondary schools’ division.

Green Up won the grand final 62-53. The ejection of Reggie Namana, when his SES side were 34-31 up, hit the older team hard. Their younger opponents — under Tyrese Tuwairua-Brown — were in front at the end of the first period, the break, and would lead by five points heading into the fourth quarter.

The record club league attendance at the YMCA this season was 210 on May 10. Two new competitions — the inaugural GBA draft leagues — have been wildly popular and are now firmly established features of the basketball landscape.

The first 40 players to register for a four-club men’s league were drafted by coaches Reg Namana, Tom Tindale, Keenan Ruru-Poharama and Adrian Sparks on October 29 for the five-week competition. It ended with Team Reg’s 85-81 grand final win against Team Tom on November 30.

The intensity of these games was different from that of club league. While at all times in 2021 the GBA complied with YMCA Covid restrictions, if no cap on numbers had been in place, Draft League games would have drawn crowds of 500-plus.

High interest in the Draft League games stemmed in part from the novelty of the concept but also from the heightened level of play, and the size and closeness of the scores.

On opening night of the club league, the Premier Grade scores were 64-40, 69-65 and 59-58. In Week 2, the scores were 73-70, 70-49, 46-44.

On opening night of the men’s Draft League, the scores were 74-68 and 77-72; in Week 2, the scores were 71-54 and 99-84.

The men’s league was a resounding success.

On December 2, the GBA had as its guest former Tall Blacks captain and current head coach Pero Cameron. He presented framed life membership certificates to Dwayne Tamatea (player, coach, administrator), Frank Russell (coaching), Clifton Blumfield (officiating) and Ben O’Brien-Leaf (media) for their service to the local game. They joined the ranks of the late Ivan Cowley and former president Steph Beattie.

That the GBA committee could facilitate that — in between naming representative coaches, running age-group trials, holding Zoom meetings and organising livestream coverage of Draft League games — is remarkable.

GBA referee Ethan Ngarangione-Pearson, 16, was a finalist in this year’s Sporting Excellence Awards. While he learned his trade and achieved his superb standard first in Hawke’s Bay under Donnette Daly, his contribution to basketball here in the past two years has been invaluable.

On December 12, the women’s draft was held and on December 14 — opening night — the Dreamers’ hard defence carried the day 28-17 against Hoops I Did it Again. Peyton Riri, youngest daughter of former Suns player Anton Riri, hit a buzzer-beater to give her Butter Fingers side a 53-52 victory.

The league will resume on January 11.

It has been a great year for Gisborne basketball in terms of the code’s growth and exposure. Last year Basketball New Zealand’s Hoops in Schools delivered two quality rings to Cobham Primary and on June 18, 2021, Tall Black Thomas Abercrombie and Tall Fern Charlisse Leger-Walker brought the same implements of the game to Elgin, former stomping ground of New Zealand Koru basketball representative and All Black Hosea Gear.

Even though the GBHS Senior A team were placed eighth at a tough Super 8 schools tournament in Hamilton, even with the cancellation of the HoopNation Classic set for October in Tauranga and in the absence of the GBA’s unique drawcard — Rising Suns Conference Basketball — the local administration has continued to not just build a large mini-ball base, but provide top-class opportunities for coaches to increase their knowledge. More than 20 of them were able to learn from Basketball New Zealand director of coach development Natu Taufale in Gisborne on June 19 and 20.

Participation is up across the board, locally and nationally. With regard to work ethic, Gisborne basketball gets a big tick for 2021. And the GBA’s golden ticket in years to come may well prove to be a strong coaching arm.