Youth League sides celebrate a mixed year

THE Geelong United boys and girls Youth League sides celebrated season 2025 on Wednesday last week at the Pathways Awards Night, held at the Geelong Arena.

Both sides acknowledged their seasons, which saw the boys side finish 11th (9-13) and the girls side finish second (16-6) in their respective leagues.

In the Big V Youth League One Women competition, United capped off a solid regular season with a 76-52 win against the Albury Wodonga Bandits.

They now turn to finals, where their second-place finish awarded them a week off. Now, they face third-placed Eltham at home this Saturday, August 2, with the winner earning a spot in the Grand Final.

At the Awards Night, girls head coach Brendon Matthews thanked his group and appreciated how far the program had come in Geelong.

“We finished second, we can’t do that without having really great people around us,” he said.

“Our program’s looking good, we made a great connection between the 18’s, Youth League and NBL1.

“I think three years ago, I’m pretty sure the Youth League was suiting up maybe 5, 6 players and that’s all they had. I reckon we had 21, 22 in our squad this year, so it’s an army and selection is super hard.

“The girls worked super hard to be part of that and they’ve all bought into what we’re trying to do. These awards aren’t really what we’re about, we’re about trying to win a championship.”

Meanwhile, the boys side failed to make finals in the Victorian Youth Championship Men competition.

However, head coach Luke Beard said qualifying for the top youth men’s league in Victoria was an achievement in itself, despite his group missing the finals.

“We set ourselves this season to hit February in the qualifying tournament and get through to VC (Victorian Championships) and be the first Geelong United men’s team to do that.

“Our aim then was to not just make up numbers – we wanted to make sure we retained our spot in VC, which we’ve done.

“If I’m being honest, we feel that we probably dropped a little bit short without playing finals. We had six games where we lost by under eight points.

“It was a great learning for all of our players… (and) this is not the end of this group. We’ll get some new blood in and we’ll go again next year.”

Big V YL1 Women award winners:

• Coaches Award – Matilda Sewell
• Coaches Award – Neve Terpstra
• Players’ Player – Matilda Sewell.

Big V VYC Men award winners:

• Players’ Player – Ethan Nicholls
• Coaches Award – Malik Davis
• MVP – Bailey Bruce.