To all Maccabi Basketball members, friends, and families,

I wanted to start by wishing everyone in our community all the best in these difficult times. It is obviously a challenge to live with all the uncertainty, but I hope we will be able to get back to the court as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the current Covid related circumstances in Sydney put an early end to our otherwise successful term 2 season. Unfortunately, the current predicament does not look like it is going to be over soon. As we now know the lockdown has been extended until the end of July.

A lot of our success can be attributed to our passionate members, who grew in numbers substantially from term 1. As a result, we embraced the inclusion of 4 new teams, which included two new Under 14 girl’s teams, who did us proud in their first season in the EBL. We hope that when we can return to the court, our girls will continue to develop and grow their passion for basketball.

Sadly, our term 2 season was cut short by one week, with our players missing their grand finals for all EBL divisions. This was particularly unfortunate as we were set to have 5 junior teams competing across the weekend, these included U12 Bulls, U12 Jazz, U12 Jets, U14 Lakers and U14 Raptors. Whilst these teams were ultimately unable to compete for their respective titles, we are still very proud of their achievements, and hope at some point they’re able to make up for their missed opportunity. We wish them mazal tov on getting to the finals in their respective competition.

Our big presence in grand finals across the last term of basketball has exhibited the success of our ‘Coach the Coaches’ program, which saw Shane Heal brought on board to develop both our coaches and players. We are very pleased with how coaches have reacted to Shane’s advice and feedback, including the implementation of a variety of drills and coaching techniques he provided. It has also been great having Shane around at the club, as he adds a special buzz to both training and gamedays when present.

Furthermore, despite current circumstances our committee have remained hard at work to ensure our players are provided with a great experience when they return to the court. From coaching development to team allocations, to assigning training venues, our club owes a lot of its success and growth to the volunteers that make up our committee.

I would love to single individuals out as they are doing a tremendous job but there are too many to mention. I am so proud of our committee and cannot thank them enough.

I also want to thank all the team managers that do an outstanding job in passing on all the information and managing their teams on a weekly basis. You are an unbelievable asset to the club that is keep our club growing and going.

All in all, I would like to wish everyone all the best for the difficult time ahead. I look forward to seeing everyone back on the court when the time comes, as well as watching our players continue to grow and improve.

All the best,

Brad Rosen

President Maccabi Basketball Club