Team Leicestershire: Secondary School Basketball Finals

Across two evenings in March, we hosted our Team Leicestershire Secondary Basketball Finals for both Girls and Boys at The Morningside Arena. These Basketball finals are one of our EXCEL events. Excel events are all about giving young people the opportunity to compete and strive to be the best they can be. To reach the finals, teams had first won their local area basketball league or tournament, playing fixtures throughout the year before progressing through county wide knock-out stages. The finals were recognition of all the hard work teams had put into the season. All the teams who made it through to finals night should be proud of their achievements, and hopefully continue their enjoyment of basketball.

In the Girls finals, all the matches were played in great spirit and all teams displayed determination right until the very end regardless of the score. It was clear that teams had been practising their skills in the lead up to these matches, particularly their shooting as there some high scoring matches. The Year 7 final in particular was extremely close with only 3 points difference in the final score between Lutterworth High and Catmose. In the Year 8 final, Gartree battled hard all the way through the game to keep within touching distance of eventual winners Catmose. A strong Saint Martins team defended brilliantly in their match with Welland Park, who demonstrated amazing resilience throughout the year 9 final. Welland Park's year 10/11 team also showed their strength of character to never give up in their final against St Paul's, who scored several impressive layup shots!

Results:

Year 7 – Lutterworth High 22-19 Catmose

Year 8 – Catmose 28-10 Gartree

Year 9 – Saint Martins 43-12 Welland Park

Year 10/11 – St Pauls 66-18 Welland Park

The same week we hosted the secondary Boys finals, and once again we were treated to some high quality match ups. It was the attacking play in particular which caught the eye, with several lay ups, slam dunks and 3 pointers being scored! All the matches were highly competitive, and once again credit must go to all teams for showing incredible determination throughout the evening, even when things weren't quite going their way.

St Paul's made it a successful week by winning two tight games in the Year 7 and Year 9 finals, well Tudor Grange made it a clean sweep of City winners for Key Stage 3 by overcoming a skilful Catmose team in the Year 8 competition. The lead changed hands on several times during a Year 10 final which could've gone either way between Bosworth Academy and Charnwood College, whilst Lboro Grammar and Ashby treated us to another high scoring game in the Year 11 final. The same was also true for the U19 final between WQE and Bosworth Ac which totalled over 100 points!

Results:

Year 7 – St Pauls 32-19 Countesthorpe College

Year 8 – Tudor Grange 47-28 Catmose

Year 9 – Sat Pauls 56-21 Catmose

Year 10 – Bosworth Academy 72-63 Charnwood College

Year 11 – Loughborough Grammar 84-36 Ashby

U19 – WQE 75-54 Bosworth Academy

We would like to extend our thanks to the Leicester Riders Foundation for all their support on the day, the Morningside Arena for hosting us, all of our officials and the staff and players of all schools who competed, as well as all of those who came along to support.

We hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed the occasion and we look forward to hopefully seeing you at future Team Leicestershire events.

You can find the full photo album of the Girls Finals here, and the Boys Finals here.