The Under 12.1 Girls took it right up to some of the state's best on the weekend, narrowly missing out on a finals berth. Coach Scott Gunther believes the weekend will hold them in good stead for the season ahead:

The U12.1 Girls team is made up of 5 returning Falcons from 2013, and 4 players from the 2013 Development Squad.

They performed admirably at the Southern Peninsula tournament in November, only loosing to the 2 Top Ranked team in Victoria in Nunawading & Knox by 40 points and 25 points respectively.

Fast forward a few weeks and the same group of girls used that tournament to springboard themselves and be one of the first 6 teams in the State to qualify for Victorian Championship.

Let's hope that the Eltham Dandenong tournament is a similar platform to build future success.

Again got the Pool of Death with both Nunawading & Knox. This time they closed the margins considerably with an 18 point loss to Spectres and their best effort as a team to date losing to the Raiders by only 3.

Nunawading ran out eventual winners and Knox pipped them by 1 point when the 2 teams met in the preliminary rounds.

So the improvement was again evident in the Falcons girls, and they are going to be more than competitive in 2014 amongst some of the Top 12 teams in Victoria. Fortunately there is more upside and skills development to come, so we should be set for a relatively good year ahead.

Apart from these 2 loses, the girls won all of their other games against Frankston, Kilsyth & Warrandyte. But the opportunity to play the best and develop is far more beneficial than any Tournament win/loss ratio, as we get to test ourselves against the benchmarks of the competition and see where and how we can improve.

Congratulations to the girls on a great performance, and were all looking forward to the next chapter of the 2014 Season.