The Shepparton Gators and the club’s prospects are intrinsically linked to the Shepparton Sports Stadium.
The Gators’ home base, nicknamed The Swamp, is the hub of Shepparton basketball.
Most domestic games, both junior and adult, occur at the stadium.
And on any given Saturday night during the Big V season, you can find it filled to the brim with fans watching the best quality of basketball available in Shepparton.
The Shepparton Sports Stadium is the home of grass-roots basketball and, now, a team competing in the highest league in Victoria.
Following their Division One grand final victory last year, the Shepparton Gators announced their promotion to the Big V Championship, Big V’s top league.
The Championship sits below NBL1, the country’s highest semi-professional league.
The NBL1 is second only to the NBL, Australia’s only professional basketball league.
So the Gators’ promotion to the Championship is a big deal, and it makes them by far and away Shepparton’s most successful and competitive sporting team in terms of quality of level and league.
It will bring state-quality coaches, players and fans to Shepparton every few weekends when the Gators have a home game.
And these premier sportspeople will be shown Shepparton’s worst sporting facility.
Gators players, and even opposition players, have said Shepparton has the best crowd in Big V.
The RMIT Redbacks, whom the Gators defeated in the grand final last year, had their best player come out and support Shepparton’s quest for an upgraded stadium.
Point guard Steve Coffey, an American import who has played in Europe, said Shepparton had one of the best crowds he’d ever played in front of.
But it had the oldest, most outdated stadium in all of Division One.
Imagine our facilities compared to the rest of the Championship, with another level of competitiveness, investment and quality of basketball.
The Gators are required to scout and sign international imports to be competitive.
Players, coaches and representatives from the club have repeatedly emphasised how difficult it is to sell Shepparton as a destination for quality basketball players due to the facilities.
It’s a big ask for the Gators to compete financially with other towns that have had investment and funding over the years, with many stadium upgrades across the state layered with junior development programs designed to feed the representative sides quality players from the region.
While Shepparton is lucky enough to have a talented core of locals within the senior side, including captain Matt Bartlett and vice-captain Sam Beks, that may not always be the case.
AFL recruit Oscar Ryan was a promising basketball player before he was eventually drafted by the Adelaide Crows last year.
Ryan said the facilities and difficulty getting on a basketball court in Shepparton were major factors in choosing football over basketball.
So, as a direct impact of the neglected and outdated Shepparton Sports Stadium, the Gators are at a disadvantage in signing players from outside the town and bringing local players through junior grades.
That doesn’t even go into the disadvantages caused by the lack of courts, including decreased training and development time and the ability to scheme for specific team match-ups and players.
It’s an entirely different ball game in the Championship, and if the Gators don’t prepare for their games properly, they will be knocked down just as fast as they came up.
The stadium also brings other frightening prospects to the Gators’ season.
The leaky roof is known to stop games whenever it rains, and it put the Big V Division One grand final in jeopardy last season.
You can’t just reschedule a Championship game.
Big V would likely penalise the Gators, impacting their season and the club negatively.
If a game were to go ahead following some rain, it might take just one wet spot on the court to cause an injury to a player.
If it were a Shepparton player, this could affect the team’s record and ability to compete.
If it were another team’s player, maybe a star import, it could put the Gators in a challenging position.
Is it truly fair for the Gators to be in that position because of a stadium that has had no investment in the past three decades?
The truly incredible thing about all this is that despite disadvantages relative to other teams within their competition and the unique challenges and lack of investment compared to other sports in Shepparton, the Gators have been remarkably successful in recent years.
They reached back-to-back Division One grand finals before winning last year, resulting in their promotion to the Championship for the first time in almost two decades.
They have cultivated a committed fan base, regularly overfilling the limited capacity at the Shepparton Sports Stadium, specifically focusing on engaging young people, with many of the Gators employed in local education.
It’s no coincidence that the explosion of junior players and enthusiasm for basketball among children has lined up perfectly with the Gators’ success.
The Gators making it to the Championship and competing at state level is something we as a town should celebrate, and it inspires young sportspeople to chase their dreams and strive for excellence as athletes right here in Shepparton.
It’s a win for us all, just as an upgrade to the stadium would be.
So why aren’t we supporting them?
Show your support for our campaign by signing our petition https://www.change.org/p/upgrade-the-shepparton-sports-stadium
Stand For Our Stadium: The story so far
Or reach out to us and have your say:
Contact details
News journalist Jay Bryce
5820 3195
@jaybrycenews on Instagram
Or The News desk at:
5831 2312