St Pats team basketball champs

A SAINT Patrick’s College basketball team has claimed the Senior Basketball Victorian College Championship.

The team, led by teachers Eric Hayes and Josh Ebbles, competed in Melbourne, playing multiple games back-to-back.

“The championships are school based with public and private schools playing against the best and competing against the best,” said player Riley Dunn.

The seniors only lost one game over the entire day and took out the grand final win by 14 points.

“It was pretty surreal to win and to beat the team that was the only team that we lost to all day was pretty good,” said player Fletcher Burger.

In total the school had more than 60 students compete in the championships in years 7 to 12.

Along with the seniors taking out first place, the intermediate team narrowly lost their semi-final and the juniors came runner up after leading for almost the entire game.

“For the juniors, we went out and won every game except two and that felt good,” said player Oliver Cape.

Teammate Lucas Byrne said the day was a great learning experience.

“There were teams getting around teams and it was good to see how other teams play basketball,” he said.

“We learnt that rest is really important because you go from one game to the other really quickly with five minutes or less.”

At the end of the year two teams are set to head to the Australian School Championships to show their skills on the Gold Coast.

There are also plans to set up a year 9 in school basketball class to get more students involved.

“This will help the basketball culture at the college as we’re getting our name out there more and teams will start to know who we are and want to play against us,” said Riley.