AGILE and tough, Monique Conti has combined her best attributes to be the best player she can be on the field or court.<\/p>\n
The Melbourne Boomers basketballer has been enjoying a sensational start to her TAC Cup Girls season with the Calder Cannons, primarily playing through the midfield before drifting forward to also provide a target inside 50. The 17 year-old is eligible to be drafted by an AFLW club at the end of the season, but for now, the top-age star is just focusing on the immediate future. \u201cI\u2019m not really sure what I want to do just yet,\u201d Conti said. \u201cI\u2019m still thinking about it. \u201cHopefully I can play AFLW and continue with my WNBL, it just depends when the seasons start and finish.\u201d<\/p>\n
To this point, Conti has juggled her commitments well since signing with the Boomers last year \u2013 a prominent year for the teenager after making the All-Australian team following the girls\u2019 youth championships. \u201cFootball has been really flexible for me and understanding of my basketball commitments,\u201d she said. Conti said she uses her agility from her basketball background and toughness from her football to cross-over into the other sport.<\/p>\n
With teammate Chloe Molloy also playing national level basketball, the pair has bounced ideas and thoughts off each other. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have another basketballer in the program, we understand each other,\u201d she said. \u201cI guess it also helps out on the footy field because basketball does complement your footy and vice versa so it\u2019s pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conti said it was an \u201cexciting\u201d time for women\u2019s football. \u201cWe do really well as a team, hopefully we can keep that up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty exciting being the first TAC Cup competition for the girls, so it\u2019s good to come into it with a good start and hopefully we can continue it throughout the season.<\/p>\n
Initially Conti joined to follow in her siblings\u2019 steps, but has well and truly carved out a career of her own. \u201cI started as a junior\u2026 because my brother played it,\u201d she said. \u201cI really enjoyed it and played with the boys then started up with Melbourne Uni in the under 18 girls. \u201cI won a couple of premierships there and then started with Calder when (the program) started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her ability to burst away from an opponent and side step them with ease is one of her most noticeable traits. \u201cIt\u2019s good to start off in the midfield, run and carry, that sort of stuff,\u201d Conti said. \u201cIt\u2019s good to hop down forward for a rest every now and again and hopefully kick a few goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calder has already won its three\u00a0TAC Cup Girls games so far and with just two more remaining, Conti is hoping the club can continue its good form. She said the competition enabled players to learn more than they had before and execute a game plan. \u201cI think it\u2019s just more focusing on our games and coming up with wins against the other teams, whereas in the past, it was mostly developing skills,\u201d Conti said. \u201cNow we\u2019re using all the skills we\u2019ve developed and putting it into play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calder faces Oakleigh Chargers and Bendigo Pioneers in the final two rounds of the TAC Cup Girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AGILE and tough, Monique Conti has combined her best attributes to be the best player she can be on the field or court. The Melbourne Boomers basketballer has been enjoying a sensational start to her TAC Cup Girls season with the Calder Cannons, primarily playing through the midfield before drifting forward to also provide a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,137],"tags":[143,142,47,141,140,138,139],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-womens","tag-basketball","tag-boomers","tag-calder-cannons","tag-chloe-molloy","tag-monique-conti","tag-tac-cup-girls","tag-tac-cup-girls-2017"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}