THE HISTORY AND ARCHIVES OF THE HORNSBY KURINGAI-GAI BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

Some Keys Years in HKBA’s Development

Now, the story in more detail…

The origins of the Hornsby Spiders can be traced back to the 1970s when an Open Men’s competition was first played at the Hornsby Police Citizens Youth Club in George Street, Hornsby. In the middle of the decade, an Open Women’s competition was also introduced. This was followed in the late 1970s by a Unisex competition that was played in a very small gymnasium in Hornsby Public School (subsequently closed and taken over by what was then the Hornsby TAFE). The Unisex competition was the first one in Sydney. By the middle of the 1980s Allan Gibson created the Hornsby Junior Basketball Association and it ran games on Friday Nights at the PCYC and there was also a small miniball competition held on Saturday mornings. All these activities were local competitions with no playing of games outside of the area.

Building the Association
Building a Stadium
Early Contributors
Staffing the Association
Fielding Representative Teams
Challenges and Successes
State Players
Referees

Building the Association

In 1985 Greg Irvine first developed a set of rules for the local seniors which by then consisted of just a women’s competition of six teams. During the following year the men’s competition was revived with initially four teams. In September 1986 a special meeting was held under the auspices of Basketball NSW to encourage the various competitions to pool their resources into a properly accredited Association. The club adopted a new constitution and set up a new Board with Peter Frame serving as the first President. The Association paid a grand total of $26 to become affiliated with the Sydney Basketball Conference. By 1987 there was a Tuesday night Women’s and Wednesday night Men’s competition but the Association only had 47 registered players and $104 in its bank account. At this stage, Mark Pitman (who had first attended the special meeting) began unpaid work to build a more viable Association. He started visiting local high schools to push the idea of basketball. The first junior competition was conducted by him at Asquith Girls High School in Term 4 of 1987 consisting of girl’s teams from Years 7, 8 and 9. Shortly after that a High School Boys Competition began at the PCYC supervised by Allan Gibson and the previous junior association was eventually absorbed into the new Association.

From this modest start, the Association grew steadily over the years until it catered for boys, girls, men, women and unisex basketball of all ages with these activities being run, at one time or another, out of Hornsby PCYC, Asquith Girls High School, Ku-ring-gai High School, Thornleigh Indoor Cricket Arena, Cherrybrook Technological High School, Loreto College, Knox Grammar School, Barker College and Mt St Benedict Girls High School. Within 10 years, the Association had well over 1200 playing members and more than $100,000 in the bank.

Building a Stadium

In 1988 Peter Frame and Mark Pitman sat down for the first time with Hornsby Council to discuss the construction of an Indoor Sports Complex. The Brickpit site in Dartford Road was the first one inspected and was the best site but for several years became tied up with other possible uses. The second best site was Old Man Valley near the Hornsby aquatic centre and the Association even drew up plans for that site. Eventually the Council came back to the Brickpit site and had plans drawn up for a large complex which would have cost around $15 million to build. The Association then decided to draw up alternative plans for a much simpler building that worked out at around $5 million and this was the one finally accepted.  After 15 long and arduous years of fundraising, lobbying and countless meetings, the ‘Brickpit’ Sports Centre opened in 2003 at Dartford Road, Thornleigh, with the HKBA contributing $120,000 to its construction. The later lobbying work of Julie Fitzgerald was instrumental in getting this project off the ground. The club received a huge boost by the opening of this building and in 2006 won a NSW Basketball Award for the club with the fastest growth in number of players. By 2007 it had more than 2600 registered players, income of over $700, 000 and more than three hundred competition teams.

Early Contributors

There were many significant contributors during the early and difficult phase of the Association’s development. Peter Frame, Allan Gibson, Greg Irvine and Mark Pitman served on the Board for many years in the 1980s and 1990s as well as performing various other roles around the club. Peter Frame was the driving force behind the club’s push for the construction of the indoor sports complex. Allan Gibson supervised competitions and was also the President of both the Sydney Basketball Council and the HKBA for many years. He also ran the Learn to Play classes for primary students at the PCYC during the 1990s. Greg Irvine put in a big effort on the development of the Referee’s programme. The miniball program was also developed under the guidance of Adrian Cotterell, Dick White and Brad Dowling. Craig and Scott Levick were both active in court supervision, coaching and refereeing over many years, and Craig also served as President of the Board between 1996 and 1998. After long playing careers, both Jason Bourke and Tim Dyball contributed enormously to the Association in many capacities but with particular distinction in the area of coaching. It is also interesting to note that in the 1990’s the Sydney Kings (Sydney’s only NBL team at that time) provided strong support for basketball right across Sydney, conducting hundreds of school visits and camps every year for Hornsby juniors. In recent years, the Association has instead developed quite strong links with the West Sydney Razorbacks (now Sydney Spirit) and the WBNL Sydney Flames.

Staffing the Association

 The Association has been fortunate in having long serving staff responsible for its development. They have been willing to work well above what would be considered normal hours. Mark Pitman ran the administration single-handedly until 1997. For many years, the Association’s office was located in Mark’s spare bedroom. In February 1995, The Hornsby and Kuring-gai Basketball Association was officially incorporated and this included the adoption of its present constitution. In 1996 office space was first rented by the club in a small shop, above a real estate agent’s office, on the corner of Leonard St and the Pacific Highway, Hornsby. In the same year, after difficulties in the club on which there are differing views, a new Board authorised a review of the Association’s future structures by Chris Poulter. He recommended employing a Chief Executive Officer, an Office Manager, a Director of Coaching and a Referees Manager. Mark Pitman, in his own words, was ‘given his marching orders.’ The club could not afford to fill all four recommended positions at the time, so it employed a CEO with Julie Fitzgerald taking up the position in October 1997. Vicki Dean, who had been acting in this role since August, 1997, became her assistant and effectively the part-time office manager.

In May 1999 the office moved to the PCYC which was more convenient in terms of running both local and representative games. The Association subsequently moved its offices into the new Brickpit complex in September 2003 and at the end of 2005 the rented space was expanded to cope with the club’s increasing size and activities. At the same time Vicki Dean took over the main administrative duties of the CEO assisted in the office by Amelia Holland while Julie Fitzgerald continued to coordinate the representative teams. The Association’s website was launched in 2004 and in 2007 HBKA received a BasketBall Australia Award for being the best managed middle size Association (501- 2500 members) in this country.

Although the ‘Brickpit’ houses most of the local competitions, the Association, given its increasing size and the need to share the complex with other sports, cannot be completely accommodated in this complex. It still has to make use of nearby school and other community facilities in order to house all of its activities.

Fielding Representative Teams

In 1990 the Association decided to field representative teams. Peter Frame suggested using a spider emblem because the club was based in an area of Sydney well known for funnel web spiders. He also suggested the team colours of black shorts with green and black singlets. An alternate singlet of light grey and green (‘the Grey Spiders’) was also used since the main uniform at the time was similar in colour to that worn by the nearby Hills Hornets. However the club had no single style of uniform for its junior and senior sides. The current uniform of green with black and white stripes was first adopted in 1999 and is now worn by all representative players for all Spider’s teams. Jan Williamson, Charan Brennan and Julie Fitzgerald worked on developing this outfit from Coast to Coast and Peter Frame helped arrange the logo of the Spider on a ball. 
 
Challenges and Successes  

Initially, the Association found the move to representative competition in 1990 a major challenge. There were problems in fielding enough teams as well as finding coaches and organising referees. However the Association was successful in the Senior’s competition when its men’s team won the 1990 Sydney Seniors Championship in Division 3. The first success in the Junior Sydney Championships was when the Under 14 Men’s Team won the Second Division grand final against the City of Sydney Sonics in 1991 while the U18 Men, also second division, were runners-up in the same year.

The Under 14 Men, coached by Craig Levick, were the Association’s first Division One side, were runners-up in the 1997 Sydney Junior Championship but went on to win the NSW State Junior Championships. The team then went to Townsville for the Association’s first appearance in the Australian Club Championships, eventually coming tenth. The first side to win a Division One premiership in the Sydney Junior Championship was the Under 18 Men, coached by Glenn French, in 2000. The first women’s team to win a premiership for the club was in the then Premiers Grade (now State League) in 1993. The Under 14 Women, coached by Kristie Fitzgerald, were the first to win a Sydney Junior Premiership in 2004 which also happened to be in Division One.

In the 1990's, Liz Kerr and Sharon Smith were the stand out senior women’s players of this era, with Liz winning the League MVP Award while Sharon was MVP of the 1993 Grand Final. Amongst the men, the highest individual award from this time went to HKBA stalwart guard, Jason Turner, who won the Jack Small Medal for the Most Valuable Player in the Sydney Senior Championships (Division One) in 1994. Recognition should also be given to now Fox Sports Basketball Presenter and NBL Hall of Famer, Steve Carfino, who played for the Spiders during the 1990’s helping to considerably lift the representative profile of the Association. Also local junior, Jason Bourke, consistently captained various Youth League and Senior representative teams from 1990 until his first retirement in 1999.

The Association’s most successful representative team to date, has been the State League Men’s Team, coached by MArk Pitman and then Peter Aitken, which won Premierships in 2002, 2003 and 2004, including playing two seasons without losing a game. Since 1990 the Association has won more than 30 premierships from Under 12s to ABA and been runners up about 20 times. In 2004, it entered a men’s team in the Waratah ABA competition for the first time and followed this in 2007 by entering a women’s team which secured the premiership in its first year.

State Players

As early as 1991, Luc Knight and Stephanie Whitely were selected for an Under 18s NSW Metro tour to Melbourne and then a Basketball Australia tour of Papua New Guinea. However it was not until the later part of the decade that representative selections became more consistent.In 1998 three Hornsby players, David Bastian, Tom Wilder and Drew Williamson, were chosen to represent NSW in the Under 16 Metropolitan team. This was the start of the selection of many Spiders’ players, boys and girls, who have represented the state. The first Hornsby girl, Maryanne Hamilton, was selected to play for Under 16 Metropolitan in 2004 and since then twenty Hornsby juniors had been selected as state players. Some of these have gone onto to play college basketball in the United States, gained places at the AIS and represented Australia in university and Under 20 teams. Ross Allsop represented his country at the 2004 Youth Olympics and Mitchell Brennan captained the Australian Universities Team in 2007. Drew Williamson returned from US College Basketball in 2006 to play in the NBL for the Townsville Crocodiles. At the same time Adrian Seiffert, Matt Unicomb and later Jamie Newth were youth development players for the West Sydney Razorbacks NBL team.

The club has also provided coaches for some of these representative sides. Mark Pitman was Assistant Coach for the NSW U18 Boys Teams in 1992 and 1993 and Head Coach of the NSW U20 Men’s Teams in 1994 and 1995. Jason Bourke coached the NSW Under 16 Men’s Metropolitan team in 1999.

Referees

 Referees have long been an important part of the club since it is impossible to successfully run is activities without the proper refereeing of its games. During the full year of 2007 some 190 referees were employed, at different times, to referee the Association’s games however the club relied upon some eighty referees as the hard core of its staff in this area.

In the early 1990s local court supervisors were usually responsible for organising their own referees and rosters. A small committee also organised a squad of referees that was responsible for representative commitments. Since that time several people, have at different stages, been responsible for co-ordination of the referees; these have included Greg Irvine, Jerrell Niu, Graham McCumber, Ricky Slowgrove, Craig Levick, Glenn French, and Rob Jesson. Since 2003 Vicki Dean has largely taken over this role as part of her other duties for the club. As well, since 2001, there has been a reorganised Referees Committee with Roque Enriqez, (2001-3) and then Shahrad Shafaghi (2003- ) serving as presidents of that body. It role is to represent and deal with matters relating to referees within the club.

Aside from refereeing local games the Hornsby referees have been in control of representative games at junior and senior levels. Derek Allsop, Vicki Dean, Glenn French, Greg Irvine, Rob Jesson, and Karen Tocque, have all refereed at State League matches and Simon Cosier and Shahrad Shafaghi have refereed at the ABA level. Glenn French was the club’s first Level 3 referee in Dec 2000 and Simon Cosier and Shahrad Shafaghi have since reached this qualification. Vicki Dean is the club’s only Level 2 referee. At Level 1a are Derek Allsop, Roque Enriqez, Amelia Holland, Greg Irvine, Rob Jesson and Karen Tocque.

What’s Next?

A number of club members recall their involvement in the Association and what it means to them.

Greg Irvine

In September 1985 I was invited by one of the players to referee in the Open Women’s Competition played at the PCYC on Tuesday nights. I had played for many years at school and had a referee’s certificate from Victoria. I soon found that there were no real rules for the local competition and so I drafted some for the club to follow. The club, as such, had a board at which each team had two delegates and each team (there were six of them) had the power of veto so nothing much was done.

During 1986 a few of us decided to revive the men’s competition and this was when Peter Frame (who was a workmate) first became involved. We put ads in the local paper for an Open Men’s competition on Thursday night, ran it with four teams and awarded the winners trophies (the first the club had given). There was also a special meeting in that year with Basketball NSW to hear about basketball development programmes, the possible building of a stadium and to consider a new constitution. The new Board was elected in late 1986 with five members that later expanded to seven. I was elected to the Board and served on it until 1996. I think Peter Frame was elected president because he was the only person at the meeting wearing a collar and tie.

By 1989 I was employed as the caretaker /cleaner at the PCYC which brought me closer to the club activities. I continued refereeing and coached numerous women’s teams in the local competitions. At one stage I actually coached two teams who competed in the grand final and so I ended up with both the premiers and runners up trophies. I also assisted Mark Pitman with some high school coaching which he ran until 1994. In 1990 I went with U14s to Newcastle as referee for the first time and got to referee the grand final for U12 women. The next year I also got to referee the U14 boys in the semi and grand finals.

Over time, I like to think that I helped develop a sense of a basketball culture in the Association and especially with referees. I went to referees camps over weekends and found it very good when Graham McCumber came to the PCYC from Victoria as he was a Level 2 referee. He and I served on referees panels for State League and the Sydney Conference and I obtained my Level One qualification. We first sent our juniors to referees camp in 1992 and 1993 and that included Karen Toque, Glenn French, Phil James and Ashley Noble. They all got to Level One. In 1994 I was also graded as Level O referee coach.

My best memories of the club are of the involvement in the early days as well as helping with improving refereeing standards and my refereeing junior grand finals. Certainly one of my highlights was the early state league teams of the 1990s when Mark borrowed the PCYC bus and organised a weekend away for a double header. Both the men’s and women’s teams played in Canberra and then at Illawarra on the next day. I ended up coaching the women’s team on the second day because Mark was coaching the men at the same time on the other court. Unfortunately we got thrashed and so my coaching record for state league was not impressive. I would also have to say that my worst memory was being persuaded not to re-nominate for the Board in 1996 at a time of considerable unrest and political infighting.

In terms of the future, we now have our two ABA teams but I would like to see a consolidation of depth in representative players at the lower levels such as Youth League and State League. Also obtaining other courts outside the Brickpit that could be used for more development programs and junior and local competitions would be in the club’s interest.  I also hope to see one of the referees that have come through the Hornsby programme reach level 4 or 5 and be given the chance of officiating at world championships. I would like to see myself as a referees coach and to go once to the Nationals but I am possibly now too old. Still I hope I can to get back to a better level of fitness.

Peter Frame

I first became involved in the club in 1986 after Greg Irvine asked me to get some friends together and enter the new men’s competition. Greg was probably right that I was elected President of the new Board later that year because I wore a collar and tie to the meeting. But I also put up my hand and said I would do the job. During the next year, we brought together the men, women, junior and miniball competitions into the one affiliated organisation. I served as President and then on the Board for many years and also served on the Board of Basketball NSW for two terms. My main focus in this period was to get a basketball stadium built for the Association.

A formal meeting was held with Council as early as 1988 to look at possible sites. The Brickpit was the first one inspected and was the best site but for several years it got tied up with other possible uses so we had to look at other places in the Shire. Our second best site was Old Man Valley near the Hornsby aquatic centre and the Association drew up plans for that site. Eventually the Council came back to the Brickpit site and had plans drawn up for a large complex which would have cost around $15 million to build. The Association then decided to draw up alternative plans for a much simpler building that worked out at around $5 million and this was the one finally accepted. This plan involved obvious compromises including reducing the building‘s courts from basketball to netball dimensions. The Council paid for the complex but the Association contributed $120,000 and secured an agreement that when using all four courts and/or playing representative basketball it would have access to the top area of the complex. At other times access to this area is through an arrangement with the manager on behalf of the council. My biggest reward was the day the Brickpit stadium was opened after so many years of lobbying. 

Aside from that event, my best memory, without a doubt, is from 1993 and playing a triple overtime game until 1am on a Wednesday night in the Sydney Senior Championship at the State Sports Centre, Homebush against the Illawarra Hawks. This was our first season in first division and we had previously been held back for a season in Division Two because we were told we would not be good enough to compete at that level. Our opponents were coached by Alan Black, then the national coach, and had six NBL players in their squad. Our only import was Steve Carfino but we only lost when a technical foul was called on Jason Turner after he stripped the ball and went for a lay up that would have won us the game. An argument then went on for some time during which I tapped Alan, their coach, on the shoulder and asked if it was you that swore and he admitted that he had. The referees then decided to restart the game with a jump ball. Jason Turner was forced to line up against the large Illawarra NBL centre and they won the ball and scored to win the game. I thought we had an honourable loss and came of age as a senior basketball association.

My main hope now is the desire for the Association to look to its future. It must make it a number one priority to secure more playing facilities. Without these extra courts, the club’s future will be limited while extra space could easily see the Spider’s become the largest club in NSW as well as provide a greater junior base for its representative teams.     

Allan Gibson

I was appointed as Maths Head Teacher at Asquith Boys High School in 1981 and started coaching school teams at the Hornsby PCYC. I also helped to create the Hornsby Junior Basketball Association which ran games on Friday Nights at the PCYC during the mid-1980s. In 1987 Mark Pitman came up to my school to see if students would like to play outside of school hours. He also asked me if I would run the Open Schoolboys Competition which I did after school on Friday afternoons. We also started Learn to Play classes for primary school age at the Indoor Cricket Centre at Thornleigh and then later on, during the 1990s, at the PCYC.

I was first elected to the Board of the Association in 1988 and have served for many years as well as a couple of stints as president including the recent period from 2003. I was made the first life member of the Association in 2000 and was proud to institute the Allan Gibson Award recognizing the service work of members in the club.

I have also had a range of involvement in basketball outside of the Association over the years. These have included Manager of Development tours to Eltham, Melbourne for U14 or U16 boys, of NSW Metro Boys in 1993 and of the NSW U20 Men’s Teams in 1994 and 1995. I was also President of the Sydney Basketball Council for ten years and a Member of the Metropolitan Operations Management Committee in the early 2000s. I was also liaison officer for the Australian Women’s Basketball Team in Oz94 and for the Canadian Basketball Men’s team at 2000 Olympics and worked as volunteer at Para- Olympics.

I have some great memories of the Association over the years. One has been of significant premierships. The winning our first Sydney Junior championships 1991 with the Under 14 team, of which my son was a member, was one highlight as was my great delight in 2007 when our women’s team won the ABA premiership in their first year.

Another highlight was the opening of the Brickpit Stadium after all those years of meetings and delegations to council that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Although the stadium has to be shared with other sports and doesn’t accommodate all of the Association’s competitions, it has been an enormous boost to our numbers.

Another memory has been of players, Steve Carfino playing for the Spiders in the 1990s and helping raise our profile was one. Also important are memories of young players who turned out to be so committed to the club over many years. One of the Asquith schoolboys who told Mark Pitman in 1987 that he wanted to play basketball was Glenn French. Another memory was of a young Jason Bourke from St Leos who came as a fifteen year old to play in the schoolboy competitions that I ran at the PCYC in the 1980s.

My priority for the Association’s future is to gain more court space so we can help increase its size and this will enable us to employ more office and coaching staff to improve the standards of both our representative and local competitions.

Jason Bourke

I first started paying basketball at Hornsby as a schoolboy in 1985 in the Friday schoolboy competition at PCYC run by Allan Gibson. I then played in the senior men’s competition with friends from around 1987. I had undertaken a camp with the Sydney Comets in Alexandria because I played with school team and with Anthony Waldron who also played State League with us later on and then coached one of the senior women’s teams.

In 1990 I began playing in the representative games for the Sydney Senior Championship in Division Three. Our pre-season trials started well but some better players dropped out and the team struggled but we eventually won the first premiership for the cub. The girls had played in Division Two of the championships and after that competition was over we then fielded two teams in Youth League. I captained the Men’s side and in the first season we took some big losses but by 1991 we were able to finish just outside the final four and I won an All Star Five place in that year.

In the Sydney Seniors Championship we won the 1992 Division Two premiership and this was also the first year of having a men’s team in State League Division Two. Steve Press was the player/coach and Jason Turner first started to play for the team. After a poor season that year we did really well in 1993 but lost the grand final against Dubbo. It was in this year we were promoted to first division in the Sydney Seniors Championship and played the game against Illawarra that Peter Frame remembers so well.

In 1994-5 I began coaching the Men’s Youth League side while still playing for the seniors as well as being assistant coach to Mark Pitman for the State Under 20s side in the same period. In 1996 I first coached juniors in Men’s U16 Division 2 and won my first premiership. I then decided to apply to go to uni in 1997 after having worked with my father as butcher since leaving school. I was accepted into UTS and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Human Movement and then a Dip. Ed in PDH/PE. While at uni I started part-time work as a sports coach at Barker College and in fourth term in 2000 got a full time position at the school. I have been there ever since and in 2008 have been appointed Director of Basketball for the school which has more than 50 basketball teams.

While at uni I continued to play seniors and to coach the U16 Juniors in both Division Two and Divisions One and also coached the NSW U16 Metro side in 1999. The U16’s lost both grand finals in 1998 and 1999. In 1998 we made it to the finals of the state championships and in 1999 we lost to Port Macquarie in the grand final. Because of workloads, I decided to retire from playing seniors in 1999 and could not play in 2000 anyway because of a serious ankle injury. However I came back as a player/coach in 2001 for the Men’s State League (South) which made the final six before losing to the Hornsby (North) team. In 2002 I played for State League (North) team which went on to win the first of three premierships. I was part of the squad for that team in 2003 before retiring for a second time although in 2007 I was back for a couple of games to help out the State League team when it was struggling with numbers.  

I also returned to coaching in 2004 when I again became Men’s Youth League coach and we lost to Sydney City in the final. In 2005 we lost to Manly in extra time in the final and both of those teams went onto win their grand finals. Our team played in Division Two in 2006 but injuries saw us miss out on the semis however in 2007 we won the premiership.

There were many highlights over the years in a club which has been the source of many friendships. Perhaps the greatest reward has been to see kids that you have coached play for state teams or even reach the NBL levels or be coaches themselves. The opening of the Brickpit Stadium is another obvious highlight for me as is being at the stadium on Thursday nights at 10pm with four games still in progress in order to fit everyone into the competitions because of the popularity of basketball in the area.

I believe the Association needs to strongly focus upon the development of local talent and to foster strong local competitions. It clearly needs, as a matter of urgency, to obtain the extra courts that need to be built at the Brickpit.
 
Karen Tocque

I first started playing basketball in September 1989 when I was in Year 9 at Hornsby Girls and played in a school team at Asquith Girls High. My team needed two people to help keep score and to referee and so I found myself in these roles. From there I became associated with refereeing and my first HBKA refereeing was with the mini-ball comp that was played at the Thornleigh Indoor Cricket Stadium. I was so shy in those days that I actually found it hard to even blow the whistle during games. In 1990 I tried out for the U18 Division 2 Women’s team and probably got selected by Mark Pitman because not many people tried out. In fact I often ended up refereeing instead of playing as well as doing the scoring for a number of representative games being played at Kuring-Gai High School. Although there is often a view that people who referee can’t play basketball themselves, I have competed in the Unisex competition at HBKA for the better part of fifteen years with very few breaks.

By 1991 I was refereeing Men’s B grade and then the A grade games and in that year won the club Referees of the Year award. My main problem in refereeing in those days was that I was a fairly short person (still am) in terms of basketball. I had to spend a lot of time practicing throwing up the ball high enough so that the bigger men could actually jump for it. It was during this time that I went off to training camps with other young refs such as Glenn French, Phil James and Ashley Noble and eventually reached Level IA. Over the years I have refereed at junior representative level and right up to State League Division One competitions. 

My main memories of refereeing are entering the court for a summer competition during the 1990s and finding myself surrounded by Damien Keogh, Steve Carfino and Bob Turner and being expected to referee players of that calibre. My second memory was of the last game of the CAS competition being played to a packed house at Knox between the Knox and Barker teams in the early 2000s. Barker was in the lead by only two points in what was a real local derby and Michael Patterson shot a successful three pointer from near half way that would have won the game for Knox. However I had already signalled it was shot after full time. My last memory, which is more painful, was of a hot day in January out at the Bankstown stadium in an U18 game between Bankstown and Sutherland. The teams traded points for points until the game got to the last minute and there were three time outs. At that stage I tore the cartilage in my knee and was in unbelievable pain. I just prayed that the game would not go into overtime. I couldn’t really walk by the end of the game and, despite a fairly successful operation, still have problems turning sharply on that knee.

In recent times, I felt that I should try to separate myself from my club commitments to some extent when I realised that I had spent almost every Thursday night and most Monday nights for the past fifteen years refereeing, scoring and court supervising. To make a break, I decided to move 30 kilometres away although I still drive back on Sunday nights to play and referee in the Unisex competition and have many friends at the club.

My view of the club is that it is a very friendly place, almost like a big family, despite its growing size, and it has a good atmosphere that I hope it never loses. I would like to see a better crowd atmosphere at the senior representative games as we had in the past, with hats, cheering and drums. I also think it important that the Association continues to build up the community of referees that we have developed in the club. We have a good reputation for fairness in terms of our refereeing. I have also been really pleased to have acted as mentor to a whole new generation of young referees.

Vicki Dean

I had refereed basketball in the United States and wanted to do it again when I settled in Sydney. In January 1992 I rang the club to see if my children could play and then asked about refereeing for myself. My daughter played Under 20 representative basketball in 1992 while I got to know people around the club and volunteered when there were needs. In 1996 I was elected to the Board and then in 1997 was employed by the club on a part-time basis.

I can still remember a phone call at midnight one Saturday night asking me to get to the Bankstown Stadium for my first representative basketball refereeing the following morning. I arrived at 8am knowing nothing much about the situation but ran into Glen Unicomb, one of the Hornsby fathers, who welcomed me to the game.

In our earlier days, before the Brickpit was built, we had to place our expanding number of teams in a variety of venues. At one stage I held the keys to eight different places around the Hornsby area. I always wanted the keys back from the court supervisors and sometimes would be up until midnight before the last of them was delivered to me. My two worst memories of those venues was being called to Asquith High School where thirty year old and very large trampolines need to be moved in order for us to play in the gym. The other was at Loreto where, due to a mix-up, the school had not told the club that the gym was being used for parent-teacher interviews the following day. I arrived to move hundreds of chairs and desks and then had to have them put back in the same place after the games. I made a map of the layout and managed to have everything back in the same place for the next day.

My husband's worst memory of this time was when someone placed our phone number in the paper as the contact for primary school basketball and over the next month we had to answer hundreds of calls. Our final phone bill for that month was ten times our normal amount.

I think there are enormous opportunities for the club and its future and I am excited about the things that can be done. We are now the third largest club in NSW and won an award in 2006 for the greatest growth in club registration. I would like to see more improvements in coaching skills as well as referee development and someone to oversee the court supervisors so that we have consistency in each area of the Association. The club already has reasonably good standards in most areas but we need to keep lifting the bar.

Julie Fitzgerald

I first became involved with Hornsby basketball in the mid 1990s when my girls started playing in the local primary competition being run by Vicki Dean. It was Vicki who later suggested that I apply for the position of CEO or General Manager in the restructure that took place after 1996. When I took over towards the end of 1997 I thought the men’s and boy’s local competitions were strong but that the girls needed development. The club had some very committed coaches such as Tim Dybell and Jason Bourke but overall our junior representative programme was fairly limited. It was also clear just how desperate was the need for more venues plus the building of a permanent stadium. I had been told I would work 9-3 for four days a week but found I needed to work from 8-6 for five days a week to handle the increasing workload including the constant battle to find places for teams and to try and get the stadium built.

The stadium issue had been around for a long time with a range of plans appearing but without any real decisions on them. We became very persistent in petitioning Council, as well as talking to the whole council and its staff, taking a number around to many areas of the state to show them what other people had as well as getting the local papers onside on this issue. We also paid for the development of the alternative plan for the Brickpit site which Peter Frame has discussed.

When the Brickpit stadium was finally built, I was never disappointed with it. Ideally I would have liked two by two courts and the current three courts in a row do not have enough room for spectators. The kitchen area is also too small but otherwise the overall building has been a good design. I thought that once we moved into the Brickpit I could relax although I had worried if we really could fill the stadium as we had claimed to the Council. In fact within a month of its opening we had filled it and could easily have filled an even bigger one and I was busier than ever with the increasing numbers in the Association. At the end of 2005 I decided to take up a full-time position with the Sydney Swifts and Vicki Dean took over most of my duties although I continue to co-ordinate the representative teams.

My highlights over the years were when our first boys made the state team and when we won our first Division One Under 18 premiership. In 1997 I never dreamed we would achieve what we did in such a short period of time. Helping establish a premiership winning Women’s ABA team and watching our young players, men and women, coming through to play at that level, has also been significant to me. Like many people in the Association, seeing the Brickpit stadium open, after so many years of hard lobbying, was also a major highlight.  

In terms of the future we clearly need to extend the stadium in order to meet current and future demands. But while we should continue to grow, we need to spend more time developing the quality of that growth. I would like the Association to be a force in Division One in every representative age group, both men and women.

Our Thanks….
To the following people who have helped with this History and the Archives- Jason Bourke, Vicki Dean, Julie Fitzgerald, Pete Frame, Allan Gibson, Amelia Holland, Greg Irvine, Mark Pitman and Karen Tocque.

*we are still missing vital information for our archives. If you can help us fill in the gaps please email info here