Category: Latest news

Bristol Storm Under 18s Euro Youth Cup Champions!

Bristol Storm Under 18s took part in the Euro Youth Cup in Blanes Spain over the weekend of June 17th-20th.  The first game was a tough fought victory versus Vilnius Basketball, a very large and successful Lithuanian club, overcoming a 9 point 4th quarter deficit to win by 3.  Games 2 and 3 were against local Spanish Clubs.  Unfortunately one team couldn’t make it so that was a walk over victory, and game 3 saw Storm dominate from start to finish ensuring all players got quality court time.  This set up a quarter final versus UK Prem side Surrey Rams.  Surrey was a very tough and skilled team, however Storm prevailed putting them in the finals versus a USA Select team called PHD Hoops.  Both PHD Hoops and Storm went into the finals unbeaten.  PHD Hoops, led by a 2 time Junior College National Champion Coach, was an extremely athletic and talented team.  Neither team could really take control of the game, and the score would remain close throughout the entire game with Bristol Storm ultimately taking the Championship game 68-62 securing their first ever European Championship Trophy!

WEBBA Invitational Cup – Pool Games

In the first tournament of its kind, and a real celebration of women’s basketball in the area, ten teams headed into the pool games at UWE on the late April weekend, the prize for the winners a place in the final at WISE on 13th May.

The pools

Pool A – Bath, Braves, Cardiff, Flyers, Mavericks

Pool B – Bristol Uni, Butedown Dragons, FireStorm, Flames, UWE

(Shortened games)

FireStorm started with a game against Bristol Uni, and it was a tight affair, but as you would expect for the first game of a long day neither team was really ‘on-fire’ and their were lots of misses, in the end though FireStorm made more shots and hung on for the win.

Second game of the day for FireStorm was against UWE and unlike the previous university, this game was very one sided and FireStorm cruised to a 25 – 6 win.

Game three was against local league rivals Flames but after initial resistance and a barrage of threes FireStorm opened up a lead and never looked back finishing 30 – 14.

Final game of the day and a win would secure a place in the final, and the game was against unknown team Butetown Dragons, it would prove to be the toughest game of the day, with Dragons initially managing to keep up with FireStorm’s scoring. To break clear FireStorm did something they hadn’t really done all day, they clamped down on defence and straight away the benefits were obvious and the game was won 27 – 19.

On to the final against winners of the other pool Braves (fourth time this season)  

 It was also key to note that today finally saw the return of Kimberley Kheing, after over a year out following ankle surgery, Kim was back on the floor – something everyone associated with Storm and basketball will have been please to see.

Estella Setting Standards

 

As the Bristol This Girl campaign goes from strength to strength, improving the access to sport and creating more options for women and girls, Storm’s Estella Maloney was selected to become one of the projects ambassadors.

Estella and the team of ambassadors will be seen touring the city with pop-up stands to increase the awareness of what is on offer for women and girls out there.

We have long been a big supporter of This Girl Can and we will continue to offer open sessions for all women and girls, whether you want to just role the ball out and have a laugh with your friends or play as competitively as you can we will do our best to cater for everyone.

  

Storming to the title

They did it.

After a long season the FireStorm team claimed the WEBBA League title with the only blip on the season an out of character defeat away to Swindon on a wet and windy Monday night.

The team finished the season with a 17 – 1 record, but very importantly for Coach also the best defensive record in the league.

‘We knew if we ran at teams for forty minutes we would have a good chance of winning, but we didnt want to just outscore people, we wanted to stop people from scoring and that mentality will definitely help the players grow when they move onto the next level, it is an old saying offence wins games but defence wins championships and our defence went a long way to securing the title for us.’ – Coach Brock

Having won the league title, FireStorm move onto the WEBBA Women’s Invitational Cup next month with the pool games at UWE, and then the Final at WISE in May.

 

 

 

Find It Film Festival

Bristol Storm’s womens and girls programmes were selected by the FindItFilm organisation to be in a film about the club and what it does.

The two days of filming were great fun and involved all the players senior and junior, the only shame about the whole thing is that we could not get hold of all the stuff that wasn’t used but the finished film was awesome.

You then move onto the main event the Find It Film Festival and it was brilliant obviously not because we were in it but because of all the inspiring films that were shown, and in some cases the adversity/challenges that people had to overcome to become successful, check out the Sportsister link below as it has links to the films.

A fantastic experience and amazing how natural some are infront of the camera.

Clips of filming

https://www.facebook.com/pg/finditfilm/videos/?ref=page_internal

Related articles

https://www.finditfilm.com/bristol

http://www.sportsister.com/2017/02/10/find-it-film-womens-sport-and-adventure-film-festival/