Brad Newley, Joe Ingles, Pero Vasiljevic, Jacob Holmes, Erik Burdon, Shannon Seebohm have a few things something in common; they have all played professional basketball and they have all represented their country at the Junior and/or Senior level AND they also all participated in the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI) squads.  SASI is an Intensive Training Centre (ITC), and is part of the Basketball Australia Elite player development network.  Most Australian born professional players playing in Australia or internationally have been identified and developed in an ITC program.

This year our Lion’s U16 boys group has 4 x players that are to commence, or are continuing, with a SASI squad.  These outstanding young men are Daniel Carlin, Matthew Bertram, Jordan Centenera and Tom Giles.  All boys have a long way to go but this is just seen as the next little step along the pathway to one day potentially making an Australian team as the 5 players mentioned at the start  of this article have done.

As a club we do everything we can to support these young men but also it is a great opportunity for our younger players who may aspire to take this next step to find out what it takes to be an elite junior athlete and what opportunities it can provide.  Daniel, Jordan, Matthew or myself would be happy to speak to any coaches, players or their parents about taking the next step in their basketball.