Gym time paying off for basketballer Maggie Manson

Time spent in the gym has been paying dividends on the court for Southland basketballer Maggie Manson.

The Central Southland College head girl and SBS Bank Academy Southland leadership year athlete has had a busy past month, turning out for the Southland Storm in the TUPU League and Otago at the national under 18 championships.

Competing in a senior competition with the Storm was probably the hardest physical test she had encountered and something she had prepared for in the Mike Piper Training Centre with Academy strength and conditioning coach Josie McKerchar, the former New Zealand under 15 representative said.

“If I wasn’t in the Academy and wasn’t going to the gym I would have struggled because the physicality was crazy. Josie just sets everything up for me and I’ve worked on my arms and legs and core so that I can hold my ground,” she said.

“It was really cool. It was awesome playing with the women from here and against ex-Tall Ferns and players like that. The physicality was crazy, they are so strong. I didn’t have to worry about doing anything else (on court), I could just do my job - getting rebounds, setting screens and things like that.”

The inaugural TUPU League replaced the former D League competition and saw the Storm bank a solid midtable finish in Tauranga. A final day win over Taranaki, who they had lost to earlier in the tournament, saw the Storm finish seventh.

From there it was onto the national under 18 tournament in Wellington, where Maggie quickly introduced herself to her Otago teammates.

The team trained together on a Sunday and left for the tournament the following Tuesday.

“Southland didn’t have a team so it was good to get to know those girls. We hadn’t played together but we got used to each other pretty quickly and figured out how each other played. We played Counties on the first day and lost to them and then we played them on the last day and beat them by, like, 20 points.”

The Otago team had a challenging pool, finishing in a three-way tie for second with Counties and Taranaki. Otago finished ninth, but only lost to Tauranga by seven points in pool play with Tauranga going on to finish second overall.

With Maggie’s focus now switching to netball, the next major basketball assignments will be the South Island secondary schools event in September and her second appearance at the HoopNation event in Tauranga in October.