Basketball Victoria believes Shepparton deserves a better stadium.
The organisation is the state’s peak basketball body and assists in servicing leagues, teams and players across Melbourne and regional Victoria.
It also assists in running the Country Basketball League and the Big V league, where the Shepparton Gators are the reigning premiers of division one.
Basketball Victoria general manager David Huxtable has actively participated in campaigns, studies and inquisitions into Shepparton’s facilities for almost a decade.
Mr Huxtable said basketball in Shepparton had grown year after year and had exhausted the current facilities at the Shepparton Sports Stadium.
“The benchmark we look for is 3.5 per cent of a town’s population is playing basketball,” he said.
“Shepparton is right up there with other towns like Bendigo or Ballarat in terms of the participation, but its facilities can’t compete.”
He said Shepparton put in a lot when the 50-year-old stadium was built and later upgraded in the 1990s.
Mr Huxtable said Shepparton deserved to be rewarded with something better than a stadium that had “reached its age”.
This is why “community lobbying” is so important.
“There’s a significant need for a development of courts,” Mr Huxtable said.
“Shepparton needs to maintain the use of the Visy Community Centre.
“Shepparton can’t lose that, and it would be great to access the courts at the Greater Shepparton Secondary College.”
The Greater Shepparton Basketball Association uses the Visy Community Centre to help with the overflow of games, teams and players at the Shepparton Sports Stadium.
Mr Huxtable said there were significant opportunities for economic growth and event hosting that Shepparton was missing out on.
He said hosting WNBL and NBL teams was a realistic prospect for Shepparton if it had the facilities.
He pointed out that Traralgon hosted an in-season NBL game between the South East Melbourne Phoenix and the Adelaide 36ers last year following its $17 million upgrade.
Traralgon has a population of just over 27,000.
Shepparton’s population is more than 32,000.
Beyond national quality basketball, Mr Huxtable said the semi-professional Shepparton Gators Big V side had been a great success in recent years.
He was aware of the disappointing scenes at the grand final this year that saw hundreds of fans get sent home due to capacity issues at the Shepparton Sports Stadium.
He said Basketball Victoria had evidence that if you have the facilities and capacity, you could consistently get 750 to 1000 people at a Big V game, and Shepparton would be no exception.
As for what an upgrade would look like, Mr Huxtable said Shepparton needed an eight-court facility.
He said a straight knock-down and rebuild was out of the question, as Shepparton was already over capacity with the courts at the stadium.
Where would basketball be played during the 18 months, two years or however long the rebuild took?
Instead, the way Mr Huxtable saw it, Shepparton should opt for one of two alternatives.
The first was a two-stage redevelopment.
In the first stage, additional courts would be built on to the existing stadium, with competitions free to continue as normal until stage two.
Once the new courts were built, competitions would move over there, and stage two would begin.
The existing stadium would then be knocked down and rebuilt, leading to a state-of-the-art upgrade to the current facility with no halt to competition.
Mr Huxtable said he understood there was flood overlay and other infrastructure surrounding the stadium but believed the land at the front or behind the stadium could be used for the upgrade if built to a proper standard.
The second option was a new greenfield site in Shepparton that would allow the continued use of the Shepparton Sports Stadium while delivering the top-of-the-line facility Shepparton deserved.
Mr Huxtable wasn’t sure which option was better or more viable but said it needed to happen somehow.
“Shepparton is falling behind,” he said.
“Shepparton basketball has been frustrated for a number of years.
“It’s a real focus for us (Basketball Victoria) to get some courts into that community.”
Show your support for our campaign by signing our petition at www.change.org/p/upgrade-the-shepparton-sports-stadium
Stand For Our Stadium: The story so far
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