MVP Harriet Welham of Bury St Edmunds reflects on Endeavour Ipswich Basketball Club retaining England Basketball National Cup in Manchester on her birthday
Bury St Edmunds’ Harriet Welham celebrated the perfect birthday present as she starred as Endeavour Ipswich Basketball retained the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) National Cup 81-53 against Brent Bulls.
On the day of her 28th birthday last Sunday, the ex-County Upper School pupil picked up her third Most Valuable Player (MVP) final award in what was also Ipswich’s third triumph in the competition.
Nick Drane’s side got themselves into a 30-11 first-quarter lead before the gap ballooned up to 48 points midway through the third quarter at The National Basketball Performance Centre.
Welham once again proved too hot to handle, dropping a game-high 28 points to go with an influential 11 rebounds and seven assists.
“It’s crazy, to be honest,” she told the Basketball England YouTube channel.
“Obviously the win is more important, MVP comes second, but just to have a third championship in a little old town like Ipswich is ridiculous and we’re extremely proud as a club.”
On what it means to win the trophy back-to-back, she said: “It’s massive. We love the cup and that’s always one of our targets in the season, we want to win the cup or have a good cup run, so that’s one ticked off for us.”
With the squad being relatively young, and the importance of getting big games like the final under their belts, she said: “It’s massive. We have a massive pathway, we have the academy and obviously we’ve got a bunch of youngsters in the crowd as well and we said beforehand that a lot of those youngsters were at our 2018 final and are now playing today, so it is just huge.
“It’s incredible to do it in such a small town like Ipswich.”
On her thoughts for the reason of the season, she said: “We just want to win as much as we can.
“It’s been a difficult start to the season but I think we’re quite strong as a squad and we keep getting stronger.
“If we keep playing like that, who knows. The treble would be lovely but we’ve got to keep an eye on the prize.”
After Sunday’s 62-57 victory away to Anglia Ruskin, Drane’s side lie second in the Women’s National Basketball League Division One standings with a 10-3 record to leaders Colchester’s 10-2.
