New Sunbury Jets men’s coach Nathan Heywood is anticipating exciting times ahead as preparations for this year’s Big V state championship season ramps up.
The Jets finished second last season, losing their finals match-ups in straight sets under coach John White.
Now with a new coach and a new team including new imports, Joshua Yorke-Frazer, Benjamon Robertson and Joel Coffey, 2024 looms as a promising season.
“We’ve done all the hard yards putting the effort in on the court, training up and we’ve had a couple of practice matches to test ourselves out,” Heywood said.
“We’re really looking forward to the next month, just fine tuning and launching into the season.
“It’s been exciting, the challenges of building a team, having all those conversations behind the scenes, then working on putting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzles together and seeing it all come together has been quite exciting.
“We took a bit of an opportunity to reset and re-establish ourselves as a team.
“With a new coach and new players coming in meant we could also look at the game style to match the personnel coming in and hopefully showcase their skill sets.
“We want to be a high octane, high tempo team that really challenges teams. Not only skill wise, but athletically so hopefully we’ll be exciting to watch.”
Not only have the Jets added three quality imports but there has been a target to acquire local talent.
Heywood said captain Nathan Marshall returns as does Jeremey Wragg who has come through the Sunbury ranks.
Nathan Baker and Kyle Collins have also returned after stints away.
The Jets aren’t setting a ceiling on themselves in terms of a win-loss ratio, instead Heywood is focussing on how the team plays and gels together.
Heywood is confident that with the local talent returning to the club and the Jets imports all living together the chemistry will not take long to form.
“We’ve got some goals on what we look like offensively and defensively but we’ll measure ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for,” he said.
“What that turns into in terms of wins and losses, towards the end of the season, we’ll definitely be much stronger and more in sync that what we may be at the start of the season.
“Chemistry and connection is the key to any team and having some juniors that played together before and our new imports living together will hopefully fast track that.”
