July 19th, 2015

Radio to Sponsor 1983 Southland Basketball

Basketball in  Southladn this year is taking on a complete facelift with the representative teams being sponsored by Radio New Zealand's Invercargill commercial Station Souhtland's 4ZA.

Radio Southland has supplied all men's and women's teams with uniforms, track-suits and travel bags. The station will be promoting the teams and basketball in general throughout the year. After the success of the new Southland instigated southern league last year, Dominion Breweries has agreed to sponsor this league.  The company has supplied the league with two trophies for the winning teams.
Team coaches Russell Frisby (women) and Neil Price (men) have their teams training for their first games scheduled to start on April 22.  With the first representative games to be played in Ashburton, Timaru and Oamaru against North Canterbury, South Canterbury and North Otago.
There are two new teams included this year - Central Otago men and women.
Next week sees the first grading games of the season.  There are a total of 80 teams competing throughout all grades, including many new combinations.  The A grade games will again be played on Saturdays with four women's and men's teams.
In the women's grade, defending champion, Rata, has no significant changes in its line-up with Liz Corkery, Desna Barnes, Vicki Beardsley, Nadia Rose and Shirley McCrea all returning.
 They will be joined by two new players, Tiny Lawry and Julie Wilson.
Brigadiers has a few new faces in its team in Tania wells, Barbara Hamilton, Sharalyn Rodan and Terresa Panagiotidis along with last year's players, Pauline Flanders, Lyn Chamberlain, Carol Gorham, Jill Bolger, Paula O'Neil and Charlene Pankhurst.
The Muskettes team has changed greatly with the departure of key players.  Returning are Kay Howley, Lyn Clark, M argaret Stott, Lee Spencer and Jan Wells.  Newcomers are D. Dyer, M Potae, Jan Arnold and S. Harris.
The fourth team is Mahia which is a young team that has played together for many years from school and the under 20 grade.
MENS - last year's comp winners Cosmopolitan, returns with Russell Frisby, Trevor Ryder, Brett McLean and Gavin Barber. Old Boys has a relatively unchanged team with Scott McCrea, Roger Owen, Stephen Sinclair, Roger Keith and Dean Wyber.  New players are Chris Wilson, Paul Pollard (Formerly of Gore) and Paul Drydan (Formerly of Tauranga).
Marist-Valet and Cubs have entered teams but uncertainty surrounds the number of players these teams have available and therefore they may not take part in the A grade.