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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At the Awards Night, girls head coach Brendon Matthews thanked his group and appreciated how far the program had come in Geelong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe finished second, we can\u2019t do that without having really great people around us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur program\u2019s looking good, we made a great connection between the 18\u2019s, Youth League and NBL1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think three years ago, I\u2019m pretty sure the Youth League was suiting up maybe 5, 6 players and that\u2019s all they had. I reckon we had 21, 22 in our squad this year, so it\u2019s an army and selection is super hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girls worked super hard to be part of that and they\u2019ve all bought into what we\u2019re trying to do. These awards aren\u2019t really what we\u2019re about, we\u2019re about trying to win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the boys side failed to make finals in the Victorian Youth Championship Men competition.<\/p>\n
However, head coach Luke Beard said qualifying for the top youth men\u2019s league in Victoria was an achievement in itself, despite his group missing the finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u2019s team to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur aim then was to not just make up numbers \u2013 we wanted to make sure we retained our spot in VC, which we\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great learning for all of our players\u2026 (and) this is not the end of this group. We\u2019ll get some new blood in and we\u2019ll go again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Big V YL1 Women award winners:<\/p>\n