Congratulations to Nikki Ireland (Lions' U14 Div 1 Girls Assistant Coach), Stephen Patterson (Lions' U16 Div 1 Girls Coach) and Andrew Jantke (Lions' U12 Div 1 Boys Coach) who recently completed their various roles in Australian Championships in Tasmania.  Nikki was a referee and even umpire the Men's Grand Final, Stephen Head Coach of the U18 Women that finnished 5th and Andrew Jantke was an Assistant Coach with the U18 Men who won a bronze medal.

The following article was taken from Basketball SA website : http://www.basketballsa.com.au/index.php?id=62&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=583&cHash=d7283b5111

Final results from the week’s competition.

Our SA Metro Men’s teams that competed in this years Championships were a small team with their tallest player being the 27^th tallest player to attend. Throughout the week their games were fought out through tough defense forcing opposition teams to have a high turnover rate. This proved the winning formula as the men won the bronze medal game, causing Queensland South to have 23 turnovers to only 4 for SA. The final score of this match was SA Metro Men 84 to Queensland South 60. Top Scorers for SA were Joel Spear 19, Tom Snyder 16 and Ryan Clark 14.

The SA Metro Women also played hard defense all week with some good 3 point shooting from a number of the girls which saw them go into the gold medal game undefeated. The girls where leading by 10 points at half time, 32 to 22. After the break Alex Ciabatoni was unable to continue to participate which changed the momentum of the game back to the Victorians seeing them win the second half and were overall game winners meaning the SA Metro Women finished the competition with a silver medal. Top scorers in the final for SA were Alex Ciabatoni 13, Jessica Goods, 12, Amy Shaw 10 and April Brown 10.

Our SA Country Women ended the Championships in fifth place after finishing second in their pool with four wins and two losses. In the later stages of the tournament the team was able to account for WA Country with a convincing 103 to 64 win. After a reasonably close first half, SA kicked into top gear, scoring a massive 64 points in the second half. They held WA to just 25 points in the third and fourth quarters to run away with the big victory. Alex Wilson continued to show why she has been considered one of the more dominant players of the tournament, finishing with an astonishing 29 points. Stephanie Talbot was also outstanding finishing with 24 points. The Women then went on to defeat ACT 101 to 32. Again Stephanie Talbot was amongst the top scorers with 27, followed by Kaylee Biddell 22 and Alex Wilson 20.

Our SA Country Men didn’t have as successful tournament as they would have liked finishing 13^th overall. On day 5 the Men came up against NSW Country. Unfortunately SA Country were not able to hold off NSW Country in a strong last quarter which ended 33 to 15 with NSW Country winning the game 89 to 57. For SA Country, Luke Van Rijn scored a team-high 22 points, while Gane Pfitzner adding 12 for the game.

Our referees also had a good week at the Championship. Nikki Ireland was successful in being awarded the men’s gold medal game - Congratulations Nikki.

In addition to our success at these Championships SA Metro was awarded with the Basketball Australia Fair Play Award. This award is a credit to all involved and recognises both on and off the court performances which are evaluated on six different criteria being technical fouls, positive play, respect toward opponents, respect toward officials, behaviour of team officials (coaching staff, managers etc.) and behaviour of team supporters. Introduced in 2003 the award aims to re-establish the concept of sportsmanship and respect in sport as well as to recognise the significance of the principles of fair play.