The Swan Hill Flyers will be hoping fresh faces and a dual change of coaches will also bring a change of luck when the 2022-23 Country Basketball League season tips off this weekend.
The Flyers will kick off the new season on Sunday afternoon at home against the Kyneton Tigers.
The Lady Flyers’ season gets underway at 12pm and the Men’s team follow from 2pm.
Both sides have undergone major change both with their playing and coaching rosters, with the feeling around both squads largely positive for what lies ahead in the new season.
Master coach Sharon Denham will take over from Ang McFarlane as head coach of a young and developing Lady Flyers squad, while for the Men’s, Steven Bowden has taken the reins as head coach during the off-season from Jacob Seears.
The Men’s team showed considerable improvement last season, finishing with a winning record (5-4) and narrowly missing the top four. After their performance last season and with some positive changes to their playing roster, new coach Bowden outlined that securing that elusive finals berth was the aim when speaking with The Guardian earlier this week.
“We’ve missed out on finals the last few seasons despite being really competitive and not far away – every season your goal is to make it to the final four and make it to the post season and that will be our aim again this year,” Bowden said.
“The Men’s team have never played finals in the history of the club and we’ve been knocking on the door over the past few seasons, so hopefully this year will be the one – it’s time for this squad to take that next step because we’re as well prepared as we’ve ever been, so there’s no excuses.”
“We beat both the Bendigo Braves and Echuca last year and they both played off in the grand final, so we’re definitely good enough.”
“It’s all about building confidence and going into each game with a winning mentality and not thinking that we could beat teams, but that we can beat them.”
While this will be Bowden’s first year in charge of the Flyers, he has been a regular fixture over the past few seasons since moving down from Robinvale. In terms of roster changes, the Men’s team have brought in a number of new faces, including Alex Erlandson and young gun Lachie Martin, who its expected will make a significant impact off the bench. But it’s another young recruit that Bowden is hoping makes a big difference to his team’s chances of playing finals amid the changes to last year’s team.
“We’ve lost a few guys from last season, but we’ve picked up a couple of really handy players as well,” Bowden said.
“We’ve recruited Lachie Somerville, who’s from Kerang and is boarding in Bendigo, he was a part of the Braves program and was on their NBL1 roster which is a huge positive for us – he’s only seventeen but he’s tall, athletic and can shoot the ball really well.”
Sunday will be the second year in a row where Swan Hill have opened their season against the Kyneton Tigers, with the Flyers getting the points with a 49-point victory in their only encounter last season.
The Lady Flyers also faced Kyneton in round one last year, however, suffered an agonising one-point loss to the Tigers. It kickstarted a tough season for the Women’s team, who won just one game for the season (against Bacchus Marsh in Round 3) despite being competitive in most of their nine matches.
With some talented younger players coming through the ranks, the Lady Flyers will look to get plenty of game time into their young squad under Sharon Denham, who is widely regarded as being one of the elite developers of young basketball talent in the state. Tess Denham will continue as one of the on-court leaders, along with Zoe Fuller and Milly Op’t Hoog who will both return to the team this season.
Denham will lead the side as captain – and outlined to The Guardian that wins and losses won’t be the main focus this year, with “development” the key word going forward.
“I think development is probably going to be the main aim this season and just getting some experience at this level into the younger players,” Denham said.
“We need speed in our game and that’s what they’ll (the younger players) bring to the table – having that speed and youth is exciting.”
“I think Swan Hill basketball is pretty lucky to have someone as knowledgeable as her (Sharon Denham) – she has all the accreditations and is an experienced coach and she’ll be perfect to help guide the younger girls that are just stepping up into the senior ranks this year.
“In terms of our experienced players, I think Zoe Fuller will be a massive inclusion for us.”
“She’s very knowledgeable and is such a competitor under the basket and having her experience will help us all out – we struggled with height last year, so having Zoe back in the side along with a few other taller players who can help us with that side of our game will be huge for us.”
