It was double delight for Seymour Blasters at the weekend, with their men’s and women’s teams capping fantastic seasons by winning their Country Basketball League North East division grand finals.
The night was extra special for the Lady Blasters, who secured their first CBL championship at Wallan’s R.B. Robson Indoor Sports Stadium after coming so close in recent seasons.
Coming in as underdogs against a top-of-the-table Wallan Panthers side playing on its home court, Seymour silenced the home crowd with a stunning second half scoring blitz that turned a two-point half-time deficit into a 73-53 victory.
Coach Bill Pearce said he could not have been prouder to see his charges become champions.
“It was really pleasing. The girls were very excited to finally come away with that victory,” Pearce said.
“The group has basically been together for three or four years and they have tasted a little bit of disappointment coming runner-up in the past two seasons to Wodonga.
“So, to get over the top of Wallan at Wallan in front of a hostile crowd was amazing and I could not have been more impressed with how the girls went about it.”
It was a tight start to the decider, with teams trading baskets to have the Blasters up by one at the first change.
It was a similar story in the second term, with the lead constantly changing in what was turning out to be an epic defensive battle.
Trailing by two at the half, the Blasters then exploded in the third term, piling on 22 points to Wallan’s 11 to break the game wide open heading into the last term.
With all the momentum firmly on its side, Seymour kept its foot on the throat, grinding Wallan into the ground to finish with a memorable 20-point victory.
Dyani Ananiev (27 points) and Maddison Ford (25 points) were the stars for Seymour, carrying the load offensively to lift their side to its maiden triumph.
Pearce said the team’s ‘‘we’’ attitude through the entire season was the driving force behind its incredible championship run.
“What we harped on all year was that this is a ‘we’ program. It wasn’t just to try and win for the girls or for me, it was about all the support they had received from their parents and things like that,” he said.
“We talked about not worrying about yourself this time, worry about the ‘we’ as a team and we’ll try and get it done, and that ‘we’ is all our supporting networks and those that have gone before them and the girls responded really well to that and dug really deep.”
Seeing the girls salute in such epic fashion, the highly-fancied men’s team then hit the floor full of confidence as it went about pursuing its ninth CBL championship.
Seymour started brightly in the first quarter, holding Benalla to eight points to open up an early seven-point lead.
But as they had done all season, the Breakers hit back hard, working hard through the second and third terms to trim the margin to four heading into the final term.
With the game well and truly on the line at the start of the fourth quarter, the championship experience of the Blasters’ line-up came to the fore, as the likes of Keenan Gorski, Jordan Hockley and Tyler Best stood up.
Outscoring the Breakers 19-11, Seymour secured a 66-54 victory to cap a historic night for the club and basketball in the region.
“It was a really tough game. They really took it up to us and it wasn’t really until the last four or five minutes that we really got away from them,” coach Craig Hockley said of his team’s performance.
“It was a shortened season with COVID-19 and all that stuff going on, but the guys turned up every week to train and the result (of winning a championship) at the end was certainly warranted after all the effort they put in.”
Seymour has been a model of consistency during its tenure in the CBL, qualifying for finals in 19 straight seasons and constantly being a presence when the whips are cracking.
Hockley attributed the Blasters’ success to having a solid group and a great culture.
“I have coached the team since the CBL started 19 seasons ago and every season we have made finals and we have been able to play in 13 grand finals and win nine, so we have had a lot of success along the journey,” he said.
“We have always had a solid group of guys that love playing together, we have built a great culture over the years, the senior players lead from the front really strongly and we just continue on being successful.”