Junior Warrnambool Mermaids win 2021 Basketball Victoria country championship

The Louise Brown-coached under 14 team will start preparing for national competitions after going through the Basketball Victoria country championships undefeated.

The Mermaids defeated Ballarat 45-37 in Sunday's grand final in Traralgon to finish the three-day tournament with a perfect 9-0 winning record.

Brown said it was a positive result for female basketball in the south-west.

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She expects to see some of the under 14 players pushing for Big V debuts in future seasons.

"It is really exciting for girls' basketball," the former WNBL guard said.

"The numbers for the girls haven't been huge in the past but they're slowly growing and the quality we've got has really improved as well.

"The Mermaids' team at the moment is really young and next year I feel there could be a couple of these girls who will go into bottom-age under 16s who could potentially start training and get a game (in Big V)."

Nine players represented Warrnambool at the country championships - Eve Covey, Indi O'Connor, Poppy Myers, Olivia Lenehan, Shelby O'Sullivan, Satu Johnstone, Rosie Bowman, Indigo Sewell and Lucy McLaren.

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"This same group of kids won it (the country champs) when they were under 12s two years ago," Brown said.

"I didn't coach them that year, Kate Sewell did."

Brown said the team entered the under 14 country championships hopeful and overcame challenges.

"Day one we got through fairly easily, day two we were challenged a little bit, we had a close game with Maffra but got over that one, and then had a quarter, a semi an a grand final on Sunday," she said.

"We won our quarter-final quite convincingly. The semi-final was a really tough game, we played Geelong.

"We've had two close contests with them now. We played them in the grand final of the Warrnambool tournament a couple of months ago and only beat them by a point.

"It was nice to get over that little hurdle and onto Ballarat who we had never played before."

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Brown said her players' basketball IQ for such a young age was impressive.

"Defensively we're a really good group so being able to hold opposition teams to lower score (helped us)," she said. "Our last quarters against Geelong in the semi-final and Ballarat in the grand final, our defence is what won us the games.

"It was really pleasing that when the pressure was on and it counted, we were able to come together and get some big stops at big times.

"Another strength of our game is we control tempo well. We can push the ball and score in transition and then when we need to we can slow it down and run a half-court set.

"There's probably not a lot of other under 14 girls teams that can execute really well in the half-court."

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