The end of the road has arrived for a distinguished group of Werribee Devils veterans in Big V basketball women’s division 1.
The retirements of Lisa Troyahn, Emma Coyne and Sharon Plichta will hit hard.
Jodi Impey has also departed, headed for either retirement or one last go round with former club Keilor Thunder, while Elisha Burnette is still to decide whether to go on.
All had long and successful careers and will leave massive gaps in the Devils’ roster.
Welcome to a new era, one with which Lloyd Klaman has been entrusted to keep the Devils’ women’s program ticking along.
Klaman, a former coach of the Canberra Cannons in the NBL, was reappointed to kick-start the Devils’ regeneration.
“I’m rapt to be back; I love the club and it’s a real exciting time,” he said. “It will be a different year with a lot of the veterans not coming back, so it will be a really young group coming through.”
Klaman sensed the end was nearing for the old-timers. The long-time coach was already laying the foundations for the next wave before extending his contract.
He put time into the development of Maddison Rocci, Georgia Tauschke, Alex Moss and Brittany Klaman and is excited at their potential.
A secondary wave of promising young under-18s appears ready to transition into the open-age ranks.
“There’s a lot of good kids coming through and I want to give them all of the opportunity that I can,” Klaman said. “A lot of the girls have now had two full years, so even though they’re only 19 or 20, they’ve got a fair bit of experience.
“With this young group, I think we can really push hard in this off-season.”
While there is no shortage of willing youngsters ready to step up and fill the sizeable shoes of the veterans, there are few ‘bigger’ players coming through the system. The centre and power forward positions might need to be outsourced.
Klaman will not decide whether to pursue an import or head hunt the odd player or two until after trials, which take place at the Werribee Sports and Recreation Centre on October 26. They’re open to all basketballers interested in trying out for the Devils.
“We’ve got a lot of good young kids, but we don’t have a lot of height,” Klaman said. “I want to see what shows up at try-outs first … I wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything.”
Klaman is content in the knowledge that the young Devils coming through have been able to learn from the “big five”.
“They definitely take a lot of experience from playing with the veterans,” Klaman said.
“As much as they learn from games, they learnt just as much just training with those girls last year.
“They were pretty savvy – you learn a lot of smarts from people like that, things they do to make the game a lot easier … it rubs off on them at training.”
