SSP NEWS

Netball

It has been another busy fortnight in the Specialist Netball Program. We have been working hard within our Specialist Area skills and breaking our sessions into the 3 areas of Goaling, Centre Court and Defence. In these sessions, the player athletes have had the opportunity to build on their current skills and learn new and specific roles within their position/s. The goalers have been practising their goal shooting, working on technique and movement in the goal circle. The defenders continue to work on their defence on a centre pass and some defensive structures across the court, and the centre court players have been working on their drives onto the circle to feed the goalers, their foot work, ball skills and working with the defenders in their defensive set ups. Each session usually finishes with some match play to tie all the learning together and ensure the different positions across the court work together to put their skills into practice. The education sessions have played an important role to allow our player athletes to analyse elite netball players in their position and identify the same skills and structures we have been working on but from an off-court perspective.

This week we have introduced the player athletes to the preparation for game day and training. For some athletes this is a lot of new information, whereas for others, they might already be implementing a number of these factors independently, including: nutrition, sleep, hydration, injury prevention and their roles on and off the court. The player athletes were able to demonstrate their preparation by taking their own warm up, ready for match play. It was great to see some leaders emerging, with several of the player athletes talking and working together to get the job done. This comes at a perfect time with junior SSV Netball carnivals being played next week. We are looking forward to putting all our practice into action!

The majority of our player athletes have upcoming trials for State Titles for Barwon & Elmer Regions where players represent their regional area in a tournament-style format. This is an opportunity to be seen by scouts and identified to progress through the Netball Victoria Pathways. We also have players participating in the Barwon Junior Netball Competition on Monday nights with upcoming finals. We send all the netball athletes our best wishes.

Stacey Dodds, Netball Head Coach

Basketball

Our Specialist Basketball Program has been working hard as usual, focusing on their defensive positioning, rotations and improving their communication on the floor. We've seen big improvements in the group's ability to help each other out and turn defense into offense in a big way.

Our Co-Director, Kaleb Sclater, has also had a busy week, heading up to Canberra as a part of the Australian Under-19s Gems Selection Camp. There he is working alongside the best coaches in the country and is looking forward to bringing his experiences back to WHC and putting them into action for all our athletes.

Kris Blicavs, Co-Director of Basketball

Soccer

Western Heights Soccer Program continues its unbeaten run!

On Wednesday 17 May, both the Year 8s and combined 9/10 Soccer teams played against North Geelong Secondary College in a friendly game. The games were organised to prepare the teams for the upcoming SSV competitions and The U/15 Bill Turner National Cup.

The Year 8s won convincingly 5-2 while the Year 9/10 came back from behind to win 4-3.

The highlights for the Year 8 team was seeing how easily and comfortably the Year 8 girls played with and against the boys. It was also a great sign for the squad to have created 24 shots on goal for the day. 

The highlight of the day for the Year 9/10 squad was competing against our regional rivals with mainly Year 9 and 8 boys and still coming home with the win.

Next week will see our Year 7s and 8s compete in the first stages of the SSV competition where it will compete against other Geelong schools. If successful, the regional competitions await. The Bill Turner U/15 National competition second round is on Friday, when Western Heights College will take on Keilor Downs College in the Boys and Overnewton College in the girls. Both teams have an enormous challenge ahead.

Joey Didulica, Director of Soccer

AFL

It has been a busy week of AFL, with our students taking part in interschool sport competitions at both Senior and Intermediate level. 

The Senior boys and girls played on 11 May. They were outstanding all day, culminating in the girls winning their final 62-0 vs Oberon and the boys victorious 50-6 vs Grovedale.

Then on 16 May, it was the Intermediate girls and boys teams' turn to take to the field. Congratulations to the girls who won their final 42-0 vs Grovedale, and to the boys who also won their final 41-6 vs Belmont.

Congratulations to all players who represented WHC with pride and good sportsmanship. We look forward to seeing them play in the next stage of competition!

AAP

Congratulations to Mana Noda from Year 7D, who has been selected by Melbourne Rebels Rugby to represent Victoria! He will play in Queensland in July in the Under-13s state rugby tournament.