A message from the Club President

Summer and Festive Season Greetings to all Wattle Park Saints Families.

Just as the weather is starting to warm up, so is the Summer Season 2024-25 at the Saints. A big welcome to our first season families who are hopefully getting into the routine of Saint’s basketball. It is fantastic to have you at the Club.

We are continuing to see the sport flourish and our own Club grow. This season we are fielding 76 teams (72 last season, 70 last Summer) and have taken 610 registrations. So each week we have over 600 athletes taking to the courts wearing the mighty red, white, and black, and playing basketball, which is absolutely amazing.

It was a massive job to complete registration this season, with plenty of new teams and new families joining the Saints and a short break between finals and season resumption. This meant the Age Group Co-Ordinators had to work hard to form teams and find spots for many last-minute registrations. I want to give them a big thank you on your behalf.

When it comes to team formation our main aim is to give as many players as possible the opportunity to play basketball. It’s that simple. We do try to accommodate all the playing requests we get - to play with friends, to play in a certain skill level, to train on a certain night, to stay with a particular Coach, to not play with certain players, to have a particular number of players in the team, even when these requests come in quite late or players need to change days for Rep or other sports. But with 610 individual requests, at the end of the day it is just not possible to accommodate them all. Sometimes the maths just does not work out. Again our aim is to give as many athletes as possible a chance to play.

More teams means more Coaches. This is always a battle for us and the greatest constraint to team formation. A big thank you to all the absolute legends who have put their hands up to coach this season. I am so pleased to see so many of our own athletes rising to the challenge and showing great character by taking on the responsibility of Junior Coach. If you or anyone you know is interested in helping to develop some fantastic young athletes in this beautiful sport, please reach out to me to find out more.

Sadly, our uniform Co-Ordinator is retiring after this season. I want to give a huge thanks to Bhagya Srinivas for doing a sensational job in keeping the uniforms up to all our players for the past few seasons. A logistics miracle to get all those orders processed, loan uniforms out (and hopefully back) and explain why number 23 is not available. I also welcome and thank Ayswarya Babu for stepping up to take over the role from next season.

With the completion of grading we move into the season proper. There have been a few teething issues with the implementation of the new grade classifications (A, AR, B, BR…..) and revised age groupings (U9, U11, U13…..) and where warranted we have raised this with the Association. However we do not determine where any team is graded and this call is with the Association.

I take this opportunity to wish all the Wattle Park families a great season ahead and as we head into the break, I hope you all have a sensational, recuperative, and safe holiday season.

Shayne La Combre
Club President

Go Saints - Brave, True, One

In this edition 

Junior Competition Rules, Fill-in guidelines and Heat Rules

What’s app group for Team Managers

School holidays are coming! A great offer by Club sponsor, International Sports Camps

Thank you to our Sponsors

Save the date – Bunnings Sausage Sizzle on Saturday February 22 2025

Uniform update - thank you Bhagya 

Dates to remember

Junior Competition Rules, Heat Rules and Fill-in guidelines

Melbourne East Basketball Association (MEBA) have recently published a full set of rules for the Junior Competition, along with clearer guidelines on players you can use to ‘fill-in’ for games and revised Heat Rules.

You can find all of these on our website.

Team managers, please check these carefully when looking for fill-in players for your team, to ensure that the fill-in players you’ve found are eligible to play for your team.

What’s app group for Team Managers

If you’re a team manager, make sure you’re part of our WPS Team Manager What’s app group. It’s a great way to keep in touch with the club and find fill-in players. Contact us at info@wattleparksaints.org.au for an invitation link if you’re a team manager and not yet in the group.

School holidays are coming! A great offer by Club sponsor, International Sports Camps

With the long summer holiday season just around the corner, we’re proud to share a fantastic offer for Wattle Park Saints families by Club sponsor, International Sports Camps. Choose from a range of dates and local venues, and save. We’ve had some great feedback from families who’ve attended these programs in the past – solid coaching, mix of activities and most of all, fun!

Make sure you enter in the code WP30 for a 30% discount.                                 

Uniform update - thank you Bhagya

A very big thank you to Bhagya Srinivas who is retiring from the role of Uniform co-ordinator, and welcome to Ayswarya Babu! 

Head to our website for details on how to order, or contact our uniform co-ordinator at uniforms@wattleparksaints.org.au

Our Sponsors 

We are very grateful to our sponsors – thanks to these sponsors, we have been able to provide top-notch coaching and development, along with coaching kits to our young aspiring Junior coaches in our community.  This support has not only improved their confidence, leadership and basketball skills but also instils valuable life lessons around teamwork, discipline, perseverance. It's heartening to see this positive impact and how sponsorship makes a difference.

Thank you to our season sponsors

Pizza & donuts : 668 Canterbury Rd Surrey Hills; www.pizzarepublica.com.au

The Prefurred Groomer:  https://theprefurredgroomer.com.au/

ABAX Accounting: Contact John Hearn jehearn@hotmail.com 

PICAC: A unique industry-led training centre with campuses located in Brunswick, Geelong and Narre Warren Contact: info@picac.edu.au 

Bennettswood Bowling Club : 179 Station Street Burwood 3125

Benetas is a leading not-for-profit provider of residential aged care, retirement living, respite, in-home and community services. 

Camberwell IGA : 1401 Toorak Road Camberwell

Everything's Connected Progressive Osteopathy : 734 Riversdale Road Camberwell 

International Sports Camps: https://iscamps.com.au/ 

Save the date - Bunnings Sausage Sizzle will be Saturday February 22nd 2025

We’re very grateful for support from Bread Street and Glenferrie Gourmet Meats for being major sponsors of this event. More details to come in the new year.

Our email address has changed

We’ve updated our email address to info@wattleparksaints.org.au

If you need to get in contact with our President, Shayne, send an email to President@wattleparksaints.org.au

For uniform enquiries, head to Uniforms@wattleparksaints.org.au

Share your game day pictures

We would love to receive any game pictures from our Monday, Friday and Saturday Teams, so we can celebrate the players, coaches and WPS community in Halo and on our Facebook & Instagram pages. 

We’re always on the lookout for any pictures of our players in action. You can send these to us at info@wattleparksaints.org.au or through Facebook (WattleParkSaints) using Messenger.

Make sure you let us know a little about the match and the players.

Close Action shots are great, team shots with Coaches are even better!

Dates for the diary

Final game before Christmas break – Monday night competition - Monday 16th December

Final game before Christmas break – Friday night competition                    Friday 13th December

Final game before Christmas break – Saturday competition                                 Saturday 14th December

Friday night competition resumes     -    Friday 31st January

Monday night competition resumes  -   Monday 3rd February

Saturday competition resumes       -       Saturday 1st February

Bunnings Sausage Sizzle - Saturday 22nd February

Monday night competition Grand final  - Monday 31st March

Friday night competition Grand final    - Friday 4th April

Saturday competition Grand final          - Saturday 5th April

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