Westlake’s champion basketballers take on the world

The sky’s the limit for Westlake Girls High School’s premier basketball team as they prepare for a tilt at the World Schools Basketball Championship in Macau, China, next year.

In September, the team went back-to-back as they secured their second consecutive win at the 2023 New Zealand Secondary Schools Basketball Championship. This built on their ongoing dominance in Auckland over the past five years where they have achieved consecutive wins in the Auckland Secondary Schools Championship and Northern Zone Premiership.

The World Schools Basketball Championship is organised by the International Schools Federation (ISF), is bi-annual and is invitation only. Next year’s event will take place between June 23 and July 3, but it will be costly and the team and their supporters are already underway with a huge fundraising effort, led by team manager Tanja Venema. Among the initiatives are carwashes, a quiz night, and school holiday coaching programmes which aim to see all the girls be able to board the plane to Macau.

Westlake’s Head Coach Bronwen Davidson picked up the Female Coach of the Year award for 2022 at the Basketball New Zealand awards in May this year. Under her guidance, the team produced a historic 30 wins and zero losses season, completing the treble of Auckland Premier Grade title, the Zone 1 National Qualifying Tournament and, for the first time in the school’s history, the Secondary Schools National Championship. Davidson, a senior teacher at Murrays Bay Intermediate School on Auckland’s North Shore, is looking forward to the opportunity Macau presents.

“It’s quite special to go with a school team as opposed to a national team and what I like about that is that we see each other more regularly than a national team; so just having that chemistry and knowing each other, I think will be on the upside for us and really help us with not feeling homesick and getting our systems and everything in place a lot better,” says Davidson.

As with any school team, creating consistent performances, year-in, year-out, is challenging, as students graduate and leave. It’s something that Davidson is ever-conscious of.

“You’re always trying to look at the year after and what that looks like and the dynamic. We were just blessed with very talented girls that bought into the work ethic that we’ve tried to instil,” she says.

Team member Rebecca Moors was at the school for five years and has just graduated. She has seen first hand the ongoing player development that’s been needed to sustain their success.

“We lost eight players from last year so we were rebuilding this year. There was a huge emphasis placed on team bonding because that’s a huge part of playing sport. I think both Bronwen and Nela [Fotu, assistant coach] did a great job with that, just having a bunch of little team bonding sessions, at people’s houses, at the beach; we’d done one session at One Tree Hill and had to run the hill carrying weights. I think we all grew close to one another and we all had one goal and that’s very important that we were all on the same page, and the hard work paid off in the end,” says Moors.

Moors and teammate Amy Pateman are two of the players who have also been recognised at a higher level for their achievements. They were among 10 Kiwi athletes who went to the Basketball Without Borders Asia camp in June this year in Abu Dhabi. Both Moors and Pateman were named to the girl’s All-Star team. NBA Academy games in Atlanta followed the month after.

“It was such a cool experience. Both camps were with NBA players and coaches that were there and it was amazing to learn from them and pick at them and get their knowledge and also just meet people from all over the world,” says Moors.

“Growing up in New Zealand you know everyone who plays your sport because you play the same people every year, so it was a great chance to meet people outside of New Zealand so you can learn new styles of play,” she says.

Although Moors will play in Macau, Pateman sadly won’t, as she ruptured her ACL in the final group match at Nationals and was unable to play in the knockout stages. She remains part of the team throughout her rehabilitation and will hopefully get to travel in some capacity if she is able to. Injuries are part of team sport and it’s a challenge the squad have overcome before as part of their ongoing success. It’s something Moors is able to reflect on as her time in Westlake colours approaches the end.

“It was such a great accomplishment and I think it shows the culture and the system we’ve put in place at Westlake. We’ve won it back-to-back now but unfortunately in previous years it was cancelled because of Covid, but I think now we’re really beginning to show New Zealand what we’ve been working on; building our programme, building our culture and it’s been really cool to see,” she says.

After Macau, Moors will be off to the University of Hawaii on a basketball scholarship. She started talking to them last Autumn and fell in love with the University when she visited. She will head over at the end of July for summer school before her other studies start a couple of months later.

Between now and the departure to Macau, there is still plenty of fundraising to be carried out, alongside preparation and training for the event. For Bronwen Davidson, all their success so far has been built on a team effort, and that’s what will see them travel to Macau in the best possible shape to achieve their goals.

“I’m just hugely grateful and thankful for our staff. We get on really well and I pay tribute to them. We do it because we love the kids. Our families put up with us going away to this tournament and that tournament, and those long evenings in the winter, but at the end of the day it’s women’s sport and we just want our girls to achieve their goals; that’s why we’re doing it.”