Geelong’s Tanielle Knight is looking to use her experiences and leadership in her last under-age basketball championship.
Knight will this month represent the Victorian women’s team at the under-20 national championships alongside Wyndham teammate Dyani Ananiev.
For Knight, it’s an opportunity she is looking forward to. She’s been part of the state program since under-16s.
“It’s very exciting,” she said. “I’m really keen to mentor the young girls being top age and showing them the ropes.
“I’m very excited to be a leader in the side. I’m sad [it’s the last one], it’s something I will miss.
The Victorian teams have a good record at the championships, and Knight is hoping that they continue it.
She said it hadn’t been the smoothest preparation for the championships, but they know what they need to do.
“The big key is to play defence,” she said. “Our defence is going to be the key to us winning games and if you have defensive pressure, the offensive will follow.”
Knight is keen to bring some of her experience and tools that she has learned at Wyndham to the national championships.
She said one of the biggest things she had learned at Wyndham was making sure that her and her teammates were held accountable to each other both at training and in games and coach Gerard Hillier has had a big influence.
Knight said the decision to join Wyndham had been the right one for her career. She was part of Wyndham’s youth league and state championship sides, which both made grand final series.
The state championship side claimed the Big V title.
“That is an experience that I will never forget,” she said of last year. “I was very shocked to make the state championship team, it was very exciting.”
Knight will play for Wyndham this season again, before she heads off to America to go to college in August.
She said they needed to continue what they were doing last year and continue to be accountable.
It’s been a big 12 months for Knight, who was also invited to Canberra with the best under-19 players in the country last March.
It just shows how far she has come in a short period of time.
“I only started playing basketball at the bottom age 16s, top age under-14s,”she said.
“It all happened pretty quickly.”
Knight said her aim was to eventually play division 1 college basketball in America, before long term aiming to play in the Women’s National Basketball League.
Tara Murray
