Promising local basketball talent makes it to national play offs in Melbourne
Douglas Heat Basketball player kicking goals
Kobi Teasdale, a 13 year old Cooya Beach local who plays for Douglas Heat Basketball Club, has been selected into the North Queensland U15 boys team to play off in Melbourne in January.
Basketball is Kobi’s biggest passion. According to his dad, Lukas Teasdale, not a day goes by where he doesn’t have a basketball in his hands.
“He has worked really hard to get to this stage and we’re very proud of him,” Mr Teasdale said.
“It feels like we’re constantly at the basketball court, whether it’s in Port Douglas or Cairns. He really loves it so as a parent that’s all you want.
“Lately we’ve had 06.00am training in Cairns twice a week so he’s up at 04.15am to make it down there but he has never complained once.
“He set a bunch of goals for himself and to see him slowly ticking them all off makes us very happy for him.”
National tournament
A couple of weeks ago Kobi participated in the Queensland Future Development Camp in Brisbane with the top-40 U15 in the state.
“It was a pretty tough competition,” Kobi said. “So when dad showed me the email saying I had been selected for the playoffs in Melbourne in January I was very excited.
“The tournament in Melbourne is a national competition.” Kobi explained. “There will be teams from all the states so it’ll be great to play against the best in Australia.”
Dad Lukas Teasdale hopes to join his son on his trip to Melbourne in January. “His Mum and I would love to go down and watch him play there so yeah that’s the plan.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how he goes against kids that are no doubt going to be giants.
“Kobi is pretty tall himself at 6’1 but he’s going to have to adjust his game to have success against this level of competition.”
Future ambitions
Kobi has big future ambitions when it comes to basketball.
“I’ve got a bit over 4 years of school left and then I really want to be at the level where I can play college basketball in America,” he said.
“My dream is to play professionally whether that is in the NBL here in Australia or some other league overseas.”
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