Basketball: Eye opener for 'got-it-all' schoolboys

Coach Kirstin Daly-Taylor says NBHS captain Jaxson Macfarlane is the real deal.

The importance of reviving the interaction with the old boys in basketball isn't lost on Napier Boys' High School first team captain Jaxson Macfarlane.

"It's going to be a good opportunity to bring back the tradition of the old boys as it has been gone for too long," says Macfarlane before their fundraising match against the NBHS Old Boys team on Saturday.

"It'll be a good game and it'll be like coming up against star players from their time so my boys are going to like it as well," says the 17-year-old year 13 pupil who made his debut for the Indigo Hawks this year.

He is mindful of the former NBHS basketballers, especially the 1992 national champions, whose life experiences were an integral part of moulding not just their career paths but also their attitude to life.

"I think it'll be an eye opener for me and my boys because we've got it all so it'll be nice for us to hear what they went through before we play at the regionals and the nationals."

Macfarlane, who Hawks coach Kirstin Daly-Taylor sees as a potential Tall Black and Australian National Basketball player, assumed the mantle of school team captain this year.

"He is a reliable trainer who always trains and plays at 100 per cent," Daly-Taylor says of the talented teenager who will jet off to Los Angeles on July 24 to attend adidas nation then to Las Vegas to represent Basketball New Zealand's Kenney McFadden Academy.

The versatile guard is a "role player when required but will step up and lead the younger group when necessary", says Daly-Taylor.

Under captain Wilfred Dickson last year, NBHS were runners-up at the regionals before finishing in 19th at the nationals.

Macfarlane's side will be competing at the regionals next term in the hope of making the nationals from September 26 to October 1 in Palmerston North.