Simon Parker has committed his basketball life to the Willetton Tigers and to the process of backing in the club’s local talent always with an eye to building to the next championship, and the timing is perfect in his eyes for this group to succeed on Friday night.
Parker has spent a lifetime in basketball at Willetton which started with his own playing career that included 120 SBL games between 1989 and 1995.
He remained involved coaching through the ranks for much of the time in between taking over as head coach of the women’s team from Brad Spicer midway through the 2014 season, and the mission was to build to the next championship.
There were still the stars remaining from the championship winning teams of 2009-10-11 under Glenn Clarke with Zoe Harper, Mel Marsh, Ebony Antonio and Kate Malpass while blending in the new breed of Desiree Kelley, Emma Gandini and Sophie Maines.
That first run at the championship saw Parker lead the Tigers to a Grand Final in 2015 where Sami Whitcomb and the Rockingham Flames broke their hearts before they responded in 2016 where Malpass was unstoppable leading them to a thrilling win over the Joondalup Wolves.
Willetton has remained a team still around the top four mark for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 SBL seasons, and only narrowly missed the top four of the West Coast Classic last year, but for Parker it has been all about building a squad for this championship assault.
That run has hit its peak this year with the Tigers finishing the inaugural NBL1 West season on top of the table, percentage ahead of their Grand Final opponents the Joondalup Wolves, and then beating the East Perth Eagles and Perth Redbacks to book a place in Friday night’s decider.
The only remaining players from that team of 2016 are Kelley, Gandini and Maines, and they are now the leaders on this 2021 team featuring the next generation including Grace Foster, Sophie Doran, Hayley Winter, Caitlin Lord, Talicia Hansen, Hannah Burt and Kaya Wardle.
They are topped up by 300-game veteran point guard Taryn Priestly and superstar pair Sam Lubcke and Alex Sharp, and Parker couldn’t think of a better group to be heading into the Grand Final with.
At the same time, they’ve already earmarked the next phase where the current youngsters in this team become leaders, and the current stars at 16s level move up to become the young players of the group.
“It would be fantastic if we were able to win obviously, but we know it’s not going to be easy. We only have Des, Emma and Sophie Maines left from our last one and they were the bench players at that time,” Parker said.
“They were the ones who stuck around to do all the hard work and now they are the leaders, and they have a different group of players underneath them. I think they deserve whatever success they have.
“We’d like to think it should be a three or four year cycle of rebuilding and getting back to the championship even though COVID has made things a little different. So that’s about how it should work so we are on target for that and now the next phase is for those three girls to lead the team to a championship if we’re lucky enough to get it.”
Parker wouldn’t want to do it any other way as head coach than oversee a program that is based around using the young and local talent from club providing a clear pathway from the junior program to WABL and now NBL1 West level.
His general philosophy has been to have a team full of local Willetton players topped up with the best quality imports to fit their needs – whether they be from overseas or WNBL level players.
You can’t argue it’s worked a treat, but in fairness not many other clubs have the depth and quality of junior talent than Willetton do to be able to follow a similar path, and Parker also isn’t too worried about how other clubs go about it.
He is proud of how he does things at Willetton and wouldn’t want to do it any other way.
“It all depends on the club culture I suppose and the style that you want to implement. I wouldn’t sacrifice what we have at our club just to try and win a championship so it’s important to us at Willetton and the way I do things that we are based around our homegrown talent,” Parker said.
“You do add a piece or two every year obviously that you don’t naturally have, and that’s my way of doing it. Everyone else has their own style and people will do what they have to do to try and be successful, but my way is to make sure we try and get it done with the local players.
“At Willetton, we are trying to identify our talent even earlier now too because we have some huge talent coming up through our 16s that we don’t want to lose. The key is to identify the talent early and working with them, getting them involved in the program and work on getting them ready.
“We had a succession plan there with Des and Emma, and those girls being ready to come in for Mel Marsh and Malpass, and now we want to make sure there’s that same pathway there for the next juniors for the girls that are playing now. I’m more than proud of the way we do things and I think it’s a great way to do it.”
Nobody is ever guaranteed anything but after the way the season has unfolded for the Tigers, Parker would have felt a little cheated had they not at least got the chance to compete in Friday night’s Grand Final.
After finishing as regular season champions, Parker didn’t quite get the start to the finals he hoped with them 18 points down to the East Perth Eagles in the qualifying final, but they were able to respond and eke out a 77-73 win.
The Tigers then dominated this past Saturday night’s preliminary final beating the Redbacks 90-65 and overall, Parker couldn’t be happier with their preparation now to face the Wolves on Friday night with the first NBL1 West title on the line.
“I think we’ve been very consistent all year with the way we’ve played, and also by finishing on top there was a bit of a break there between the top two teams. So to not make the Grand Final would have been very disappointing given all that,” Parker said.
“It was just a good team effort on Saturday night. We got about double-figures in scoring from five or six players so we had a lot of scoring punch which was good. We had 31 assists for the night and a low turnover count which was good and then our steals were up there as well.
“The big one was probably winning the rebound count by 20 as well against a team that had Maddie Allen so it was an all-round impressive team performance to be honest.
“I think you always go off your last game and going back to against East Perth we only played 20 minutes of basketball. We showed what we could do in 20 minutes in that second half but we didn’t really turn up in the first two quarters to be honest.
“But going off that last game against Redbacks, we are more than ready now for the Grand Final.”
If the last meeting between the Tigers and Wolves is any indication, we should be in for quite the spectacular Grand Final on Friday night.
It was their only meeting during the regular season with Rebecca Benson hitting a prayer to force the game into overtime up at HBF Arena, and then the Wolves overrunning the Tigers in the extra period to 85-79.
Parker saw plenty in that game that he feels Willetton can improve upon come Saturday night, but ultimately he feels it’s going to be whoever’s defence works best that will prevail.
“I think there were a lot of things we could have done better in that last game, in particular looking after the basketball,” Parker said.
“They are very good with their pressure defence so that’s going to be a big focus for us this week will be looking after the basketball and not giving them any cheap shots from turnovers. That will be one thing we’re watching for but really we feel like we match up pretty well against them.
“Scoring-wise we’re about the same but the big key will be the defence. Both teams are keeping teams to around the 65 points throughout the regular season so whoever does that better on the night is probably going to end up winning the game.”
Precious little separated Willetton and Joondalup throughout the season which is why they ended up on identical 15-3 records. The defences of both teams were outstanding with the Tigers conceding just 63.4 points a game and the Wolves 64.1.
But offensively the Tigers did have significantly more firepower scoring 85.1 points compared to the Wolfpack’s 75.3, and Parker feels having so many scoring threats led by Lubcke and Sharp but backed up by Kelley, Gandini and Winter could get them over the line.
“We are happy with the scoring options that we have and even if we have a couple of players dry up or get tagged out of the game a little, we have that next person who can step up and we’ve got some players to come off the bench who can shoot the ball as well and can be good on their day,” he said.
“I think we just have that next-pass offence that we can go to and on the night the girls just have to make their shots at the end of the day if we are going to win.”
Looking at the bigger picture, Parker is excited to see the way basketball continues to grow in terms of the exposure the NBL1 competition is providing in particular.
There’s no question more people have been watching this season than ever before thanks to the live streaming available to anyone who wishes to tune in, and especially with the lockdowns across the country, WA basketball has been something to savour.
That’s something that is exciting for Parker to be part of and he’s looking forward to it only continuing to grow.
“They have done a wonderful job with the new format and it’s not something I think too much about and I don’t think the players do either until you get home after a game, but there’s no doubt you notice the increased exposure we’re getting and that more people are seeing our games,” Parker said.
“It doesn’t come into your thinking in preparing for a game, but just seeing how much the sport has grown and the exposure it’s getting is only going to help it continue to grow. I’m looking forward to seeing where it continues to go from here as well.”