After a 10-0 start to their VJBL League One season, the Waverley Falcons Under 18.1 girls team went into the Queens birthday weekend tournament at Nunawading. Playing against VC teams from here and one team from Adelaide, the team was going to be challenged a lot more then they have been over the first half of the regular season.

After beating Woodville Saturday morning on the back of a huge game from Claire Ioannidis, and then Blackburn Saturday night, a finals spot was secured. We beat Eltham comfortably on Sunday afternoon and lost a close one against Nunawading, in a game which didn't mean too much Sunday evening. This meant we finished 2nd on the ladder, to set up a semi final against Woodville, yet again.

The girls were able to jump out to a nice lead early on and were able to hold their nerve and win a close by game 8, to set up a grand final against VC team Eltham.  Eltham were a different team in the grand fina.l They shot the ball very well from the perimeter in the first half, and we were able to stay close enough in what was a very close game throughout. With 2.6 seconds left on the clock, we had the ball on the side line with an opportunity to win the game with the scores tied at 37. With a well executed play, Eva Nikolitsis was able to score on the buzzer and we won the game by 2.

Big thanks to all of my team; Claire, Beth, Eva, Isobel, Julia, Melissa, Melanie, with a special thanks to Maria, who is one of our Under 16s who helped us out this weekend and did a great job. Thanks to Fran the team manager, parents and friends for their support. And lastly, thanks to the Youth League Womens team for coming down to support some of their younger team mates.

It was a very successful weekend and was good for the girls to know that we can and should be playing at the highest level.
Coach Elias.