The D-League is a three-week tournament aimed at showcasing and assisting in developing the best talent from each junior league around the state.

It identifies talented players and coaches who are competing and coaching within each junior league while assisting with their development by playing and coaching against each other in a three-week tournament.

Phailin McKibbin, Maddi Baxter, Chloe Hanlan, Alice Hillsdon, Sam Blain, Prada Hanlan, Hayley Eggleton, Monique Rudder and Blake Collins will all represent Port Macquarie at Penrith in October.

Coaching director and under-18 girls representative coach Nick Prior said it was a pleasing result for the association who only had five players selected last year.

"Effectively it means they're getting earmarked as a top 20 player so they're there or thereabouts as far as potential future rep honours," he said.

"They're also on the radar of development pathways as far as Basketball NSW is concerned.

"It's a good opportunity for the kids to play against those higher level competition guys which they rarely do.

"These guys are the better kids in their team and usually carry a fair bit of the weight as far as being the go-to players, but when they go in these other teams they're just one of the team."

Prior said they were hopeful of having a number of players selected, but were surprised to have such a strong contingent selected in the various age divisions.

"When you think about it, the amount of kids that will be playing in the state and the pool you're drawing from ... there's over 950 kids applying," he said.

"So that's a 100 to one ratio for our kids so that's pretty good.

"For an association of our size, it's quite good to be that heavily represented.

"Historically over the years we hope to get a handful of kids in each year, so to get the number we have is pleasing for us."

Baxter and Rudder have been selected for the third year in a row, while the rest of the contingent spearheaded by Prada Hanlan have made it for the first time.

"Maddi and Monique are quite elite and accustomed to this, but for all the other kids it's their first time," Prior said.

"For Prada, this is the first time she's dipped her toe in the water outside of Port Macquarie basketball so to be selected is a big thing."

The competition is played across the under-14, under-15, under-16 and under-18 boys and girls divisions in a round-robin format played over three weekends.

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