NBL1 West Season Preview
Our NBL1 West Head Coaches Craig Mansfield and Damian Barr have given us their thoughts on NBL1 West Season 2025 which tips off this Friday night at Bendat.
Craig Mansfield (Head Coach NBL1 West Women)
We are very excited to be starting the season and are excited for the squad we will have competing throughout 2025. We have had our fair share of player movement in the preseason with injuries, illness, WA state team representation and other professional duties but the group is coming together now and the girls have been working intensely together.
We return a large part of last year’s line up, including Captain Maddy Dennis, Vice-Captain Mia Satie and import Grace Stone, but we will certainly miss Millie McCarthy for a season or two while she studies overseas, Sam Ashby who is part of the Great Britain national team that have qualified for Eurobasket 2025 and Ash Isenbarger who is taking a well-earned rest season. To balance our line up with these changes we are very excited to welcome Jayda Clark, Ruby Vlahov and Sav Metcalfe back from injury, as well as Alex Fowler from the Townsville Fire, Amy Jacobs from La Salle University and early in our season Sami Whitcomb from the Bendigo Spirit and Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA. We also proudly have 6 new players from our Hawks WABL program with their first NBL1 contracts in 2025. All together, this gives us a formidable line up that over the course of the season will play better and better together each week.
It would be great to see as many people as possible out at our games, the NBL1 West women’s competition promises to be the most talented on record, and as a team we are looking to play a fast and exciting style of basketball with many highly skilled players. Our goal as a group will be to play to proudly play to Hawks values, and as a team take another step forward from our top 4 finish last season.
Damian Barr (Head Coach NBL1 West Men)
2024 was a transition year, the Purser, Cassir, Parsons era had finished and with a raft of retirements the squad was left young and largely inexperienced on court at NBL1 level. Being the first year with a new head coach, a new system it was also a year of learning, both on court and off, as a group. Dealing with injuries to key senior players throughout the season also helped teach the group about resilience and coming together to deal with setbacks. All this enabled the leadership and coaching groups to identify what was needed as we headed into the 2025 season.
Retaining our core group of locals was first and foremost, and we have successfully done that. With all of our leadership group, Captain AJ Nobensi, Matt Leary, Cooper Hamilton and Luke Phillips all signing up to continue to build something with this young group we were off to a great start. The addition of 200+ game veteran Seva Chan provides some much needed experience and on court leadership for what is still a very young team. We all identified a need to defend better so the recruitment of a genuine 5 man who was athletic, can rebound and protect the rim was high on the agenda and we’re excited to see what young Davin Miller can do in his first pro gig since college. The addition of a lock down defender, in the mould of 2022 DPOY Cameron Coleman was also seen as a key recruit. We believe we’ve found this in Jaden Stanley-Williams and look forward to seeing him drive our defensive aggression and passion through the 2025 season.
A few tweaks to the offensive end, a greater focus at the defensive end and a more experienced group of young players all point to what should be an exciting 2025 season for the Hawks.
Game Information
See the Hawks in action this Friday night at Bendat vs the Lakeside Lightning : Women 6.30pm Men 8.30pm
Tickets are available at the door or online here
Season Memberships are available by clicking here
Click here to see the NBL1 West Season Fixture
