Herbert Joins Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence

The Ballarat Miners Women’s Head Coach David Herbert has been appointed the Head Coach of the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence.

The Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence (CoE) – formerly National Intensive Training Centre Program (NITCP) and AIS Basketball Program has been the world-leading junior development program since 1981.

Herbert said “I have had to make a very tough decision to announce, the 2022 NBL1 season will be my only season with the Ballarat Miners Women’s program.  I made a commitment to the Miners that I would only ever consider leaving the program if an amazing opportunity came up and it has.”

Herbert added “At the conclusion of the season, I will be relocating to Canberra to fill the Head Coach role at the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence.  This position comes up very rarely and is a role that I consider to be the pinnacle of Australian Junior Women’s basketball.  I am very humbled to be successful in gaining the role and have been working closely with the club to ensure the Miners Women’s program will continue to grow and flourish in the NBL1 competition in the future.”

Basketball Ballarat CEO Nev Ivey said, “We are all immensely proud of David and wish him all the very best in the new role”.  Ivey adds, “he will be a significant loss to our program however, we have the rest of the season to focus on right now and David, his coaches and a very talented team appear poised to push deep into the Finals”.   

Herbert continued “We have had an amazing season of growth with the Ballarat Miners women’s program with all players being exposed to a variety of new schemes on both offence and defence.  It has been a terrific learning experience for me to watch some of the young talent make progress with their basketball IQ which will hold them in great stead in the future.”

Herbert finished with “While a few of these players have not hit the court as much as I would have liked their growth is something I am proud of. They have been exposed to some of the latest coaching techniques and I can’t wait to see continued growth at practice and games across the remainder of the season. We are still every chance of making the finals and this will be the first time for the program since 2013”.

The Miners Women will welcome back Jade Melbourne from her Australian Opals camp in New York when they host Diamond Valley this Saturday night before heading to MSAC to play Melbourne Tigers on Sunday.