THE Horsham Hornets under-14 side has finished the 2016 national club championships ranked tenth in the country.
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Having worked hard just to get there coach Damien Kilpatrick headed into the week without lofty expectations.
“We didn’t set unrealistic goals,” he said.
“We couldn’t have asked for anything more. We wanted to win a game – we did that, we wanted to finish top-12 – we did that, we then looked at top then – we did that.”
Kilpatrick said getting a win in the first game of the week was a big highlight.
“It took the pressure off everybody to get a win at national level,” he said.
“There were plenty of highlights during the week though.”
Horsham won through to the top-12 championship division by finishing second in its pool over the first two day of the championships.
The side lost its first championship pool game against Knox and came within minutes of booking a top-eight finish against the North Bears.
A 58-48 win against the Canberra Gunners on Friday meant it played against Diamond Valley to determine ninth and tenth spot.
A four-point loss in the final game of the week did nothing to erase how well the side performed during the week.
“We played great basketball all week with some brilliant patches,” Kilpatrick said.
“It’s very tough for country towns to do well because the boys just don’t have the match fitness and game time that other teams have. For Horsham to make it is such an amazing effort in itself.”
Kilpatrick said the boys in the team gained a lot of experience from the championship.
“They’ll take a lot out of it,” Kilpatrick said.
“To see the way we competed and the way other teams played was great.
“We were one of the fastest teams out there. We were fit and fast and we ran.
“That’s the thing teams had to work to shut down against us. That was just amazing for the boys because there was high quality basketballers there.”
Ben Hobbs finished the championships among the top scorers.
Hobbs scored 152 points during the week at an average of 21.71 per game making him the fourth highest scorer.
Sam Breuer scored 83 of his own points and drew consistent praise from Kilpatrick during the week for his defensive efforts.
