{"id":15132,"date":"2020-06-11T11:23:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T01:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basketball.draftcentral.com.au\/?p=15132"},"modified":"2020-06-11T11:23:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T01:23:45","slug":"wnbl-free-agency-heal-and-tupaea-become-first-to-switch-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wnbl-free-agency-heal-and-tupaea-become-first-to-switch-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBL Free Agency: Heal and Tupaea become first to switch teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

TALENTED teenager Shyla Heal<\/strong> became the first Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) player to switch allegiances for the 2021 WNBL season. Amongst a high number of re-signings for the University of Canberra Capitals – six players re-signed to the reigning premiers – Heal moved from Bendigo Spirit to the Sunshine State to take a chance with Townsville Fire.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Heal last week<\/a>, the 18-year-old has the intention of nominating for next year’s WNBA Draft, and she is determined to have a strong season with the Fire alongside another talented youngster in Zitina Aokuso<\/strong>. In a breaking announcement today, Sydney Uni Flames point guard Tahlia Tupaea<\/strong> has also headed inland and signed on with the Capitals. The talented 23-year-old who has had her fair share of bad luck through injuries since debuting at the age of 15 – the second youngest in WNBL history – will look to have a clean run in the nation’s capital.<\/p>\n

The other big talking point was Alanna Smith<\/strong> returning to Australia from College to line-up with Adelaide Lightning next season. She was drafted in the first round – eighth overall pick – in last year’s WNBA Draft to go to the Phoenix Mercury after graduating through Stanford.<\/p>\n

Given the likelihood of Brianna Turner<\/strong>‘s unavailability – due to the league not having imports – the power forward position is Smith’s for the taking. It allows her to team up with Lauren Nicholson<\/strong> and Steph Talbot<\/strong> in the City of Churches to try and bring Adelaide a title after being on the verge of being a contender the last couple of seasons.<\/p>\n

The Spirit might have lost Heal over the Free Agency Period, but have re-signed Demi Skinner<\/strong> and Tessa Lavey,<\/strong> whilst Jenna O’Hea<\/strong> put pen to paper for another season with Southside Flyers. The Capitals re-signed six players in a spree early in the period, with Maddison Rocci<\/strong>, Abby Cubillo<\/strong>, Alex Delaney<\/strong> and Keely Froling<\/strong> joining Kelsey Griffin<\/strong> and Marianna Tolo<\/strong> in the capital to try and mount a title defence.<\/p>\n

Three players have also announced their retirement from the league with Adelaide’s Nat Hurst<\/strong>, Bendigo’s Gabe Richards<\/strong> and Sydney Uni’s Sarah Graham<\/strong> calling it a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TALENTED teenager Shyla Heal became the first Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) player to switch allegiances for the 2021 WNBL season. Amongst a high number of re-signings for the University of Canberra Capitals – six players re-signed to the reigning premiers – Heal moved from Bendigo Spirit to the Sunshine State to take a chance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":13674,"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":[2808,2809,2812,2813,2814,2815,11],"tags":[3028,2175,3001,1990,1965,2499,31,23,172,61,22,173,268,43,38,234,232,205,1972,3003,201],"class_list":["post-15132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adelaide-lightning","category-bendigo-spirit","category-southside-flyers","category-sydney-uni-flames","category-townsville-fire","category-uc-capitals","category-wnbl","tag-2021-wnbl-season","tag-abby-cubillo","tag-alanna-smith","tag-alex-delaney","tag-brianna-turner","tag-gabe-richards","tag-jenna-ohea","tag-keely-froling","tag-kelsey-griffin","tag-lauren-nicholson","tag-maddison-rocci","tag-marianna-tolo","tag-nat-hurst","tag-sarah-graham","tag-shyla-heal","tag-steph-talbot","tag-tahlia-tupaea","tag-tessa-lavey","tag-wnbl","tag-wnbl-free-agency","tag-zitina-aokuso"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}