As the 2024 Summer Olympics are well under way in Paris so are the always highly anticipated basketball tournaments.
This year Australia has a great chance of coming home with a medal from the men’s Boomers and the women’s Opals.
Both teams are in very competitive pools with the Boomers draw being named “the pool of death” with the countries Greece, Canada and Spain who are all loaded with a lot of NBA talent.
In the Opals pool they too have some fierce opponents such as Canada, Nigeria and France.
Mount Gambier has a big connection with Basketball Australia with many players from the Pioneers being involved in international basketball.
OneFortyOne Pioneers women’s player Zitina Aokuso was very close to representing the Opals as she put on the green and gold earlier this month in two exhibition games against China as a member of the national squad.
Castec Rural Pioneers player Nick Marshall is also someone who has represented Australia this year.
Marshall played for the Boomers early this year in Bendigo, taking the court in two qualifying games for the 2025 FIBA world cup.
On the other side of the globe former OneFortyOne Pioneers women captain Cass Brown will be representing Canada in the 3×3 women’s national team.
Last Olympics the Opals did not have the best tournament, losing to the USA in the quarter finals.
The Boomers on the other hand made history, winning their first medal in the country’s history, defeating Slovenia in the bronze medal game.
The Boomers picked up a solid win on Saturday night against Spain while the Opals played their first game against Nigeria on Monday night and suffered a loss.
On Tuesday the Boomers played Canada where they fell short by 10 points and the Opals play their next game in a must win tonight against Canada.
However, every Olympic journey must start somewhere and there is no shortage of opportunity for Limestone Coast juniors.
Young players have a chance to experience competitive basketball as the Mount Gambier Lakers season is soon to begin, with training starting back up for the representative teams.
As well as the Lakers training, Basketball Mount Gambier ran a two day training camp this week led by Utah Jazz assistant coach Evan Bradds.
Basketball Mount Gambier’s Scott O’Connor has noticed a lot of excitement around the Olympics and particularly the basketball tournament given the connections some of the Pioneers players have to Basketball Australia.
“With Basketball Mount Gambier and the Pioneers not directly affiliated to the Boomers or Opals but to even have somebody playing locally like Zitina Aokuso who was one cut away from making the Opals squad brings a lot of excitement to the region for basketball,” he said.
“When you look at basketball across the whole region to have somebody who’s that close to an Olympian playing locally is phenomenal and it’s great for basketball in the area.”
O’Connor hopes the success of our Olympic heroes inspires more people to get involved in the sport.
“I have just finished some school clinics with Compton Primary School and all the kids were excited to watch the Boomers and the Opals and I think seeing Australia succeed in a sport like that is phenomenal for participation,” he said.
“We sure hope it leads to an influx of kids wanting to get out and try basketball and hopefully pick it up and fall in love with it and play along with that dream of representing their community then their state then country.”
“Someone like Dyson Daniels, who grew up four hours away from here and probably played in junior carnivals against the Mount Gambier Lakers in some of those western Victorian carnivals, shows that it’s achievable and it shows these kids from these small country communities put in the work then they can make it and that’s a tangible dream.
“I think that a kid from Mount Gambier can do it, so I think that’s a real positive to see some of those young and really fun influencers on the game.”