The Queen's Birthday weekend will see the 15 years, 17 years and Opens competitions take place, with the younger girls set for the first weekend of July.

The Illawarra 17 years side finished third at the State Titles last year, however many of the members of that team have graduated to Opens competition. In their place are a number of promising players who are in their first year in this age group and coach Kay Buckley is confident the girls will perform well on the weekend.

"The girls are all very excited," Buckley said. "Most of them are coming up from 15s last year and have moved into the senior ranks, so are pretty excited about that.

"We don't really have a set goal as far as positions, we have team goals and individual goals and hopefully if we achieve those, we will do well. It's more about us working together and taking each game one step at a time. The goal is to perform as well as we can and do the things we've been practicing at training."

Buckley has good reason to believe her side will cope with the extra physicality seen in the older age groups, with the side finishing second at the recent Region Championships in an Opens competition. The Illawarra 15 years side took out the second division.

While the Illawarra 17s will compete in the Championship division this weekend, the 15s will compete in Division Two.

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For Buckley, the Region Championships was the perfect way to prepare her side for the rigours of this weekend's state championships.

"We've been telling the girls how different it is at senior level, how tough and resilient they need to be and they've shown they understand that at training.

"We went away for the weekend to Goulburn a few weeks ago for the Region 5 Championships where we came up against older seniors. We were runners up and fared well, that toughened the girls up and they became a lot more aware of what they need to do."

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