AUSTRALIAN under-17 women’s coach, Basketball NSW National Intensive Training Program (NITP) mentor and former national under-19 gun Shannon Seebohm was impressed with all the up-and-comers he mentored at week’s Rock The Rim clinic at Sir Neville Howse Stadium earlier this week.
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One kid stood out though.
That’s hardly surprising, considering the player in question is just under 200cm tall, still growing and has no issue posterising players week-in-week-out.
“Shannon is the NITP coach, so he had already seen the likes of Annie Miller, Jay Cole, Kobe Mansell and Zak Simons, but he hadn’t seen Matty Gray before,” Rock The Rim owner Grant Cole said.
“He had heard about this kid from Orange who dunks on everybody and he was very impressed when he finally saw him in action”.
Gray, a Canobolas Rural Technology High student and member of the school’s High Performance Athlete Program, has long been considered a prodigy in Orange circles but plenty of others have taken notice in 2016 as well, leading to his selection in the NSW All Schools side earlier this year.
He was one of a 40-strong group from Orange and its surrounds that Seebohm, who coached the Aussie under-17s to the 2016 world championship, put through their paces while in the colour city on Wednesday and Thursday.
“It was really positive and really beneficial for all the kids there, we had about 40 on Wednesday and then Shannon did some work with 10 or so on Thursday as well,” Cole said.
After splitting the group into two, Seebohm took the young guns through a number of drills and activities based around game awareness and attacking structure.
“It was all at game pace too,” Cole said.
“There was no walking around after drills, it was all running so there’s a bit of discipline and professionalism involved there as well.
“He focused on things like moving the ball up the court at speed, getting up and down the court and the way the kids attacked the basket, particularly making sure they’re always looking at where they’re attacking. Sometimes kids get caught up looking at the ball when they’re dribbling, that kind of thing.
“Then he worked through the way they build their attack, from one-on-one up to two-on-two, three-on-three and so on.
“The group was split into two, the older, stronger players I guess you’d say were on one court and then the younger kids were on another one. They went through the same drills though.”
Cole said the improvement was evident virtually from the get go and suggested the players involved will benefit immeasurably from Seebohm’s guidance.
Matt Findlay
Formerly a sports specialist, I'm based at Orange and shift between wide-spread range of subjects here and, often, across the entire Central West region of NSW as well. I have almost a decade of experience in the media and marketing industries both here in Australia and internationally, along with journalism I have experience in content strategy, brand development, and digital and social media. Along the way, I've been fortunate to win a handful of media awards and be nominated for several others too.
Formerly a sports specialist, I'm based at Orange and shift between wide-spread range of subjects here and, often, across the entire Central West region of NSW as well. I have almost a decade of experience in the media and marketing industries both here in Australia and internationally, along with journalism I have experience in content strategy, brand development, and digital and social media. Along the way, I've been fortunate to win a handful of media awards and be nominated for several others too.
