BASKETBALL
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THE Bathurst Goldminers have taken the first step to what is hoped will be a more fulfilling season results wise in 2015 with the re-appointment of coach Ben Slater.
Slater had one of the toughest jobs in Bathurst senior sport this year in trying to lead the regularly undermanned, inexperienced and almost always undersized Goldminers in the men’s State League competition.
There was noticeable improvement in the side throughout the season, but in the end Bathurst won just the one match, that victory coming against fellow battlers Dubbo.
The signs were positive though, and the Goldminers showed enough for Slater to put his hand up once more.
“I was more than happy to have another go at it,” he said.
“Even through all the difficulty we had in terms of results, it was still a hell of a lot of fun and there was no worries about whether I’d enjoy having a second year.”
Slater explained that a motivating factor in his decision was the idea of trying to build on the second half of the 2014 season that saw his team being competitive with even the best sides in their division.
Often they were within a few points of their opposition at half-time only for one bad quarter to cost them a chance at victory.
It was a far cry from the start of the year where they were battling to just stay in touch and be within 30 points at the main break.
“For starters I just love doing it, I’ve been playing since I was 11 so that’s 12 years straight of being involved, and the last nine of those have involved coaching or refereeing in some way, it’s what I enjoy,” Slater said.
“But certainly the idea that we had a lot of young players this year who are going to develop further and get better with another season of basketball in them, that was a bit of a factor too.
“We generally only had six players or so per game this season, but I believe the majority of the guys in the squad are going to be staying on for another year.
“We don’t know what Laurence Mifsud will be doing yet with his overseas studies, but we often didn’t have him this year anyway. Ding Mawien is one that we will be losing.”
In addition to getting experience into the younger Goldminers players next year, their chances of improving in 2015 hinge largely on scoring machine Will Ozolins.
An early goal will be to boost their win percentage and Slater said that will be enough to satisfy him. However, he admits that he has his eye on a bigger target, and the planning is already beginning.
“We’re going to start with a few trials and things in the next few weeks, we want to get started a lot earlier than we have in the past,” he said.
“Every team we play against is bigger than us, they are basically older men and have a lot more experience.
“I would definitely expect though that we could get more wins, and I think that if we play our best we can hopefully aim at maybe trying to sneak into the top four by the end of the competition.”