AFLW Season 2023

The AFLW season is just days away with Melbourne and Collingwood playing at ICON Park in the opening game on Friday night.  Once again MSA has great representation of our Alumni in the competition with 9 former students and 1 former Hockey coach playing in season 8.  We have compiled a list of players and how they are expected to go this season.

Essendon

·      Georgia Nanscawen - A former hockey coach here at MSA, Georgia has been picked up by Essendon after playing for their VFLW team last year where she missed the Grand final due to a knee injury.

Geelong Cats

·      Georgie Prespakis – The curly haired blonde with the long sleeves, Georgie had an amazing 2022 with the Cats in her debut AFLW year.  She was named in the All-Australian team on a wing and AFLPA best 22 under 22 team.  Expect her to be prominent in this year’s Best and Fairest voting.

Hawthorn

·      Charlotte Baskaran – Charlotte played 10 games for the Hawks in her first year of AFLW while also finishing her Year 12 studies last year.  With her first full preseason finished, she is expected to shine for the Hawks this year. The 18-year-old averaged 10.5 disposals and 5.1 tackles in her 10 games last year and finished seventh in Hawthorn’s inaugural bast and fairest.

Melbourne

·      Libby Birch - The two-time premiership player (Bulldogs and Melbourne) is entering her 8th season in the AFLW.  Libby once again reached All Australian status in 2022 following on from her selection in 2020.  She also won a premiership with the Demons in Season 7 last year. Coming out of the backline, Libby provides plenty of drive out of the Demons Backline to help set up their forward movement.

Kangaroos

·      Amy Smith – The tackling machine Amy Smith played all games except for one in season 7 last year.  Amy put on a tackling clinic in the Elimination final racking up 17 tackles for the Kangaroos.  She is now a main stay in the North Melbourne outfit and we are expecting a big year from her this season.

Richmond

·      Monique Conti - Monique started her Career at the Western Bulldogs in 2018, helping them win a premiership in her debut year.  Monique enters her 7th season in the AFLW having spent the last 4 season at the Tigers.  Monique has won 5 best and fairest (1 x Bulldogs, 4 x Richmond) and has had 4 All Australian selections.

·      Ellie McKenzie - Ellie was the 2020 #1 draft pick and is in her 4th season at Richmond.  Ellie had an interrupted AFLW season 6 in 2022, she improved in season 7 and was selected in the season 7 All Australian squad. Expect this to be a breakout year for the talented midfielder.

St Kilda

 ·      Georgia Patrikios – After missing the entire in season 2021, Georgia made her return to the competition last year.  The 22-year-old won St Kilda’s Best and Fairest in season 2020 and 2021.   She played 10 games in Season 7 last year and we expect her to return to some great form this season. 

Sydney Swans

·      Aliesha Newman – Aliesha joined the Swans last year after 6 seasons at Melbourne and Collingwood and play season 7 at the Swans.  She is known for her explosiveness and can often be found running down the wing and is very damaging in front of goals. 

Western Bulldogs

·      Jess Fitzgerald - Jess was the #2 pick in season 2020.  Jess is a clever user of the ball who is improving her game year on year.  Expect Jess to also set the AFLW on fire this year.

With the AFLW season commencing this week, we're pleased to announce that the AFL are offering our Maribyrnong College community an AFLW ticket offer for round 1’s Victorian Games.

The offer includes a 2 for 1, making tickets for adults $5 and children under 18 free but you need to redeem a ticket.

To unlock the offer, the promo code MATESW8 needs to entered when prompted.

MELBOURNE vs COLLINGWOOD
IKON PARK
1 September
https://www.ticketmaster.com.au/event/13005F011DA93C51?did=2for1
 
 
CARLTON vs SUNS
IKON PARK
2 September
https://www.ticketmaster.com.au/event/13005F011ED63C69?did=2for1
 
 
GEELONG vs BULLDOGS
GMHBA STADIUM
2 September
https://www.ticketmaster.com.au/event/25005F01206424DD?did=2for1
 
HAWTHORN vs ESSENDON
KINETIC STADIUM
2 September
https://www.ticketmaster.com.au/event/13005F02E7513866?did=2for1

The Score - 230823

From World Championships to World Cups our MSA Alumni have been once again showing the World what they can do.  Here are their efforts.

Firstly, before we get into this week’s results, we must mention that we have 2 Alumni in World Championships over the next few days.  Gronya Somerville is playing in the Badminton World Championships in Denmark.  She will be in the Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles. 

Celeste Mucci is in Budapest for the Athletics World Championships and will run her heat of the 100m Hurdles at 2.30am Wednesday the 23rd of August Melbourne time.  The race will be live on SBS.  Celeste is aiming to run a personal best time which is currently 12.84 seconds.

Athletics

Congratulations to former MSA High Performance Manger Brent Vallance who coached Jemima Montag to a silver medal in the 20k walk at the Athletics World Championships in Budapest.

Baseball

MSA Alumni Declan Speirs (Pic Above) and Current Year 10 student Jayden Kim have been selected for a second time in the Australian U18 Baseball team to play in the World Cup.  The tournament is in Chinese Taipei starting on the 2nd of September.

Netball

Over the past couple of weekends, we have had a great mix of current and past students and coaches, compete in the Victorian Netball finals.

MSA Alumni Kiralee Collings played in the U19 final as a co-captain for the City West Falcons coached by Hayley Cran.  The Falcons lost to Melbourne Uni U19’s team who had Current student Montaya Sardi, Akira McCormack who was named best player in the final, Tepaea Hobson and Sarah Mylrea-Norton as their coach.  Kim Borger lined up for the VNL Championship Winners the City West Falcons.

Special mention to Tepaea who is currently away competing in ANC (Australian Netball Championship) in Queensland. Tepaea was a late inclusion into the Vic team due to injury. This competition is made up of a lot of up-and-coming players currently playing SSN or on the fringe of being contracted! This is a fantastic achievement from our Tepaea. All games are streamed FREE on Kayo.

NRLW

Najvada George and her West Tigers had their 4th loss in a row after starting the season with 2 wins, this time to the Dragons by 4 points.  Najvada played 55 minutes and had 6 tackle breaks for a total of 26m gained post contact.  She had a season high 36 tackles and received the ball 21 times.

AFL

Brisbane v Collingwood

The Lions defeated The Pies by 24 points with Cam Rayner having 14 disposals, 4 tackles and kicking 2 goals 1 for the victors.

North Melbourne v Richmond

Paul Curtis had 16 possessions and kicked a goal for North Melbourne while his teammate Kayne Turner had 11 possessions and 3 tackles in their loss to the Tigers by 29 points.

Carlton v Gold Coast Suns

Rory Atkins continues his good form with 23 disposals and 389m gained while Touk Miler had 29 possessions, 8 tackles and 1 goal in the Suns 4-point loss to Carlton

GWS v Essendon

Peter Wright had 5 disposals in Essendon’s poor performance against the Giants going down by 126 points.

West Coast v Bulldogs

Former MSA student Harry Birch was one of 4 field umpires in this game.  Rhylee West had 11 possessions and kicked a goal for the Bulldogs in their 7-point loss to the Eagles.

Hawthorn v Melbourne

Joel Smith kicked 2 goals and had 7 possessions in the Demons 27-point victory over the Hawks.

Fremantle v Port Adelaide.

Zak Butters had 31 possessions, kicked a goal, and had 5 tackles for the Power in thier 16-point win. Luke Ryan had 25 possessions, 9 marks and 6 tackles for the Dockers.

Next week we will have an AFLW preview before Round 1, focusing on the MSA Alumni to watch in this year’s competition.

Looking forward to the 2024 Paris Olympics

We continue our look into the MSA Alumni who are a possibility of being a part of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which is now less than 1 year away.  This week we look at the sport of Taekwondo.

Reba Stewart (MSA class of 2019) and Leon Sejranovic (MSA class of 2020) are considered genuine contenders for a spot on the Australian team for the 2024 Paris Olympics.  For Reba it would be her second Olympics after being in the Australian team for Tokyo in 2021.  As a 20-year-old Reba suffered a first-round defeat at the hands of a Polish fighter who was ranked number 6 in the World.  While Reba’s confidence grew as the match went on, the damage on the score card was done early by her opponent, and the final score of 7 points to 2 wasn’t a true reflection of the entire bout.  Reba spent 4 months recovering from a back injury in the middle of 2022 and since then has been right into competition, recently winning a gold medal at the Kimunyong Cup in Korea and Bronze at the Korean Open.

Leon is shooting for his first Olympics and has also been in great form in the past 12 months.  He has won two gold medals in the past 2 weeks in Korea at the Korean Open and the Kimunyong Cup.  But the highlight for Leon was winning a bronze medal at the Taekwondo World Championships in Buku, Azerbaijan.  It was the first medal for Australia at a World Championships for 10 years and the first Australian Men’s able-bodied athlete to medal at the World Championships for 18 years. The 20-year-old defeating the World number 1 on his way to the Bronze.  Read more here.

There are some major competitions coming up for both athletes in the next 3-4 months including:

September 1-3 – Grand Prix, France 

October 10-12 – Grand Prix, China

October 14 – National Championships

November 28-29 – Pacific Games – Solomon Islands 

December 2-3 – Grand Prix, Great Britain

Both Reba and Leon are back at MSA and have been working as assistant coaches in 2023 in our Taekwondo program. They are a great inspiration to our current group of Taekwondo Athletes.

The Olympic selection process for Taekwondo runs from January 2024 to the final qualifying event in early April.  We wish them all the best in the next 9 months.