Basketball: Youngsters turn history on head

A bunch of raw basketball recruits got more than they bargained for when they went south to compete in the Bay of Plenty U15 championships.

The Huanui College team left last Friday but took a detour to the New Zealand Breakers' training facility on the North Shore.

"It was great timing that the Tall Blacks were in camp and what was so special was that they got to talk with Pero Cameron, who is one of Northland's proudest sons," team coach and Northland Suns player, Travis Mcilroy, said.

Meeting Cameron and the Tall Blacks whom they had only seen on television before was exciting for the youngsters and helped motivate them.

"I always like to take teams that I coach to the Breakers' facility on our way to tournaments. I'll call a few of the boys down there to meet us at the facility on the way through; it really is a great experience for the kids," Mcilroy said.

For most of the boys in the team it was their first tournament outside Whangarei and for many it was also their first year in the sport, so the coach concentrated on the enjoyment factor rather than on results.

The team arrived at the new Tauranga Events Centre stadium for their first game versus the Tauranga City Development side.

Mcilroy said they were nervous but after a good warm-up and team talk they won their opener 77-51. The team were then scheduled to play the top side at the tournament, Tauranga City, who hadn't lost a game in the competition's history.

The game-plan was to keep the scoreline as close as they could to the older, taller, faster and more experienced Tauranga City premier side, and Huanui stuck to the plan to perfection.

The final part of the plan was to strike in the fourth quarter and cause the biggest upset in tournament history, and that's what happened. The final score was Huanui College 61, Tauranga City 60.

Mcilroy said the team had given him one of the proudest moments of his career as player or a coach.

The next match, against a top Rotorua team, went according to plan until the final quarter when fatigue and frustration hit and they were beaten 77-71.

The final round robin saw an even more ill-disciplined performance end in a 78-63 loss to Tauranga City B.

Despite the poor finish, Huanui College's tournament efforts impressed their coach, who involved the school in the "Rising Suns" Programme - an in-school skills coaching initiative run by the Northland Suns Basketball Development Trust.

"As a team we had no real expectations heading to Tauranga. We headed down to set the standard and lay a foundation of what we wanted our basketball programme at the school to grow from," Mcilroy said.

They certainly did that with the remarkable victory over Tauranga City. The team also found their identity and will be known in the future as the Huanui Hornets.

"My enduring memory of the tournament will always be the smiles of the boys and how happy they were when they ran on the court, and the school's founder, Evan Hamlet, with his head in his hands and a stunned look on his face when we caused the biggest upset in tournament's history by beating Tauranga City."