By BACT Media Unit – 1 November 2022

With the 2022 Premier League and junior Winter season now completed, Basketball ACT is gearing up for a bumper Summer season in 2022/2023.

The Athlead Summer Slam started Wednesday – 19 October 2022 – at Belconnen and Tuggeranong. The Athlead Summer Slam is a unique competition where eligible players nominate for a draft and are then selected to teams which see regular rivals playing together, and team-mates on opposing sides. Players are drawn from ACT Premier League, junior representative teams and Basketball Australia’s Centre of Excellence, and the competition is contested by 6 men’s teams and 4 women’s teams.

To complement the Athlead Summer Slam, Basketball ACT’s Junior Slam commenced on Friday – 21 October 2022 – with Junior Premier League players nominating to be selected in one of four Under 15 Boys teams and Under 17 Boys teams, and six Under15/Under 17 combined Girls teams. In an exciting development for the 2022 Junior Slam, members of the NBL1 East Championship Canberra Gunners – Glenn Morison, James Toohey, Mitch Brown and Tristan Scotcher – took the coaching reins of the Under 17 Boys teams.

The 2022/23 Summer season has also seen a massive increase in teams nominating for the Junior Summer competition, 375 teams across U10-U19 competitions, and solid team nomination numbers across other Senior competitions – Summer Open (17 teams) and Senior Social (167 teams).

The high participation numbers will see Basketball ACT once again stretched to accommodate games, training and competitions at their current facilities, however it continues to highlight the popularity and increasing interest in the sport in the ACT region.

Basketball ACT’s General Manager – Operations, Nicole Bowles said “Our Summer competitions continue to grow each, and every year, and the increased number of teams nominating for the junior summer competitions is a nice headache to have, but at the end of the day it is still a headache”.

Fixtures and results for the 2022 Athlead Summer Slam and 2022 Junior Slam can be found on PlayHQ.