Basketball is thriving in Wonthaggi

By Aiden Box

AFTER COVID robbed them of a membership record season in 2020, the Wonthaggi Amateur Basketball Association (WABA) has recovered in sensational fashion. 

With 680 total registrations, the WABA boasts 81 junior teams, 21 senior teams and 50 games a week with 530 juniors and 160 seniors playing, 13 men’s teams and eight women’s teams. 

Their representative or ‘Coasters’ teams are thriving too, with 14 teams competing, four age groups playing two full sides and 146 total players competing. 

An incredible achievement from the regional club and in speaking to new president Michael Bell and representative team’s co-ordinator Lincon Morris, one that has been achieved thanks to their new home stadium and the evolution of the sport itself. 

“I think it comes down to a lot of things, obviously the new facility, but basketball is really taking off too,” Bell said. 

“The sport is in a growth period at the moment, but I think our facility and the growth in our area is helping a lot.”

The new four-court stadium has the full plethora of facilities from a grandstand on the show court, to a canteen and has helped Wonthaggi become the hub of basketball in the area. 

“This is our second year with our two CBL (Country Basketball League) teams, basically we can only run what we have today because we have this facility, which has been massive,” Bell said. 

“We’ve had a mini tournament of practise games we had Foster, Korumburra, Leongatha and Phillip Island all here today and that was under 12s and 14s and the CBL will follow that up and we’ve got 10s, 16s and 18s (tomorrow).” 

It’s not hard to see the impact the new facility has had on the association, allowing them to not only run 50 games of domestic basketball weekly, but also host representative teams from clubs around the region and state. 

An amazing step in the right direction for an association that once struggled to get juniors and adults on the courts, and Bell and Morris heaped their praise on the growth of the game and their club. 

“Basically, we just wanted to get them out and playing, COVID stopped a lot of kids from getting active and I think basketball is a great sport,” Bell said.

“You only have to go to one spot, one night, one stadium, indoors, five kids on a court and every kid gets a touch it’s great for self-esteem.

“We’ve got an all-abilities program running now on Mondays, which is growing, we had six last year we’ve got 10 in it now, we’re catering for all with everything we’re doing.”

WABA hosted a mini ‘festival’ of basketball last weekend, with junior representative teams from around the region converging on the Coasters home courts building up to Saturday night’s CBL home openers against local rivals Korumburra.

Both the women’s and men’s CBL games produced some incredible basketball in front of a bumper crowd, showcasing the great culture WABA has built thanks to some hard work behind the scenes. 

“We’ve put a lot of time into developing our referees and coaches and supporting them and that obviously feeds into better quality games and experiences for the kids who enjoy it because that’s the thing that matters,” Morris said. 

The new association president agreed with Morris and is hugely grateful for the work of those who came before him.

“It’s a credit to a lot of our past committee members, and a few of our execs who have stepped down, there’d be at least 15 on the committee, there’s a lot of people willing to help,” said Bell. 

“Kids actually want to come to the basketball, come in here any night of the week and there’s kids in here, even tonight there’s kids from Korumburra playing around, it’s great there’s a good crowd out there it’s phenomenal.”

“It’s taken a lot of hard work from a lot of people to get this happening so, thanks to Cathy Garnham, Cam and Mandy Lean and Katrina Maxwell who were previous execs, they put a lot of hard work in.”

The association has built and sustained an exceptional culture and is headed in the right direction both on and off the court, as Bell and Morris explained.

“I think looking at the practice games and the competitiveness of all our rep sides, it’s a credit to the development of our domestic competition, we’ve started running under 8s and you can see the skill difference coming through to our under 10s,” Bell said. 

“It means we’ve sort of fast-tracked their progress through the system a little bit so when they want to play rep we can compete against these bigger associations and be more competitive.”

Saturday’s CBL matches were split at one apiece as the reigning champion Coasters women’s side were defeated by a strong Korumburra line up, and the Coasters men snatched victory in the final seconds thanks to a clutch bucket from Abram Cox in a fiery matchup. 

The Coasters men and women will be back in action this Saturday night at home, when they host Sale with the women’s tipping off at 5:30pm and the men at 7:30pm.