This Sunday, our Youth League Men and Women are in action taking on newcomers to the Victorian Youth Championship League, the Frankston Blues. Congratulations to Natalie Karantzoulis who plays her 100th game for the mighty Eagles!

Youth Women tip off at 1pm and Youth Men tip off at 3pm.

Here's our Coach's previews on the upcoming games:

Coach’s Corner – State Youth Championship Women 1pm

Today we welcome Jason & his VYCW Frankston Blues side to the DV nest for our first regular home game of the season.

 Frankston will go into this game brimmed with confidence after a great hard fought win against Waverley last week with Hayley Leknius pouring in 16 points & 10 rebounds, backed up by Casey Blay with 14 & 11 & Deanna Jolliffe with 16 & 7.

 We on the other hand are looking for our first win of the yr with 2 average performances so far.E.G. I have no doubt Frankston will be looking to do everything they can to gain the upper hand in this contest but we will be doing everything we can to atone for the past 2 losses & score our first win for the yr.

 I have no doubt this will be an enthralling contest with both sides looking for the W in what looks to be a enthralling contest between 2 teams that have yet to play each other in the this new & exciting competition.

 I am sure Jason has his team focused on trying to snatch a win on our home court but we will be doing everything we can to try & get the W. It will be a great game with both teams & coaching groups alike determined to give their best!

 To all the people behind the scenes that have helped get us on the court I would like to express my gratitude and know that the group will do you proud every time they take the court.

Sit back & enjoy, which I have no doubt, will be a great game.

Thanks to everyone for coming along, barrack hard and go DV Eagles!!

 - Andrew White

 Coach’s Corner – State Youth Championship Men 3pm

Welcome to the first home game for 2013; this is the first time that we have put on the singlet in front of our home crowd for 2013.

 Like most years, the team of 2013 has a few new faces, whilst a couple of the players have decided not to play, some have moved on to other clubs, and others have moved up to represent Diamond Valley at the Championship Men level. We are proud of our home grown talent at Diamond Valley.

 New players:-   Ernst Kruger currently a Diamond Valley under 20, Justin Petrie currently a Diamond Valley under 20

Nick Dean from Diamond Valley Under 18’s in 2012

Matthew Jackson from Diamond Valley Under 18’s in 2012 (who played only a handful of games last season due to World Championship and Victorian commitments)

Bastian Allen from Diamond Under 20’s in 2012

Jack Thornton from Bulleen

Game 1 v Knox at the Pre-season tournament was a great effort, as we also played the pres-season tournament in Div 1 men in the heat, and banging up against bigger bodies. Down 2 at quarter time, a big 32-16 2^nd quarter set us up for a hard fought win 93-76. It was pleasing to have five players achieve double digit points. There is plenty to work on, but it was nice to start with a win!

Game 2 v Sandringham. What a heart breaker! A 2 point loss! We should never have found ourselves in the position we were, but 1 point up and the ball in Sandringham’s hands in the dying seconds of the game. They shoot a 3 pointer with 0.5 secs to go putting us 2 down. Time-out, play drawn up, we got the shot off, but missed. A very disappointing result. Scoring just dried up in final quarter 13-25, and we just couldn’t hold on.   We will need to work particularly hard at training this week to remedy the problems we had.

Game 3 v Eltham – Looking forward to redeeming ourselves from the 2 point loss the night before, the game was called off due to a power outage.

Today we welcome Frankston to our home court. Frankston are coming off a big loss at the hands of the talented Waverley, and I’m sure they will be out to prove they are better than that. We will also be out to prove to ourselves, coaches and supporters that our loss last week was not acceptable, and that the hard work we have done at training this week was all worthwhile. We are not taking today’s game lightly. We will prepare for this game as we do every other game we play. We look forward to hitting the floor and coming away with a win.

This year’s support staff will be Brendan lee and Gani sakiri, both returning from 2012, and Damian Clarke who we welcome back after a year off to coach dv under 20's to a VC championship. Shelley Reynolds is staying on as team manager.

This year’s team is very different from 2012, however, I believe we can, and will, play an up-tempo relentless style of basketball. We hope that you will be behind us for another year, a year that we can hopefully go that one step closer and bring home the Champions trophy. Thanks for your support, and we hope to see you at as many of our games as possible.