Port Fairy's Eve Covey named vice-captain of Victorian Country under 16 basketball team

The 15-year-old Emmanuel College student has been named vice-captain of the team and will play alongside fellow Port Fairy local Poppy Myers at the national championships from July 2 to July 9.

It's an opportunity the talented youngster is relishing after getting a taste of national level basketball in the same tournament last year.

"I'm very honoured and I have to say a massive congratulations to Mia Harvey who is captaining the team," she said of being named vice-captain.

"I'm excited to have a leadership role and hopefully looking forward to leading the girls to that gold medal game.

"That's the goal for the team.

"This team looks really, really strong. We had a practice match against Vic Metro (last weekend) and were only down by five with a few minutes left and ran out of legs."

Covey said she had taken plenty of learnings out of the tournament in 2022 and would be better placed.

"Learning from last year, the first year is always interesting and it was just out of COVID," she said.

"Training each day, how to eat right, getting water into your body, recovering, all those things I was able to learn more.

"I took so many takeaways from it and I've learnt to look after my body."

She is training with Warrnambool Mermaids but not playing with the championship-winning Big V unit this season in order to prioritise her state duties.

She added she had also given away netball after "not enjoying it".

"It was a tough decision this year to choose states," she said.

"Last year I obviously ended up in a moon-boot in Perth and that was just from my workload, so I had to make the decision on either states or Mermaids.

"The Mermaids' tryouts were before the state teams came out.

"I bet on myself to make the (state) team and I made that decision but I still get to train with them now.

"There are great coaches and players who help me get better."

Covey will feature for the Victorian Country team in a practice match against the Mermaids at Emmanuel College on Sunday morning from 11am as part of a Warrnambool-based camp ahead of the championships.

"That's a bit of a luxury having the camp in Warrnambool, only a 30-minute drive," she said.

"I'm really looking forward to it and for training in preparation coming up."

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