Heart of the Heartland: Ringwood

Ringwood Basketball Association has provided high quality and inclusive basketball programs for all age groups over nearly four decades.

Recently, the Ringwood Hawks achieved the feat of being one of the special Victorian clubs to compete in NBL1 and are pursuing excellence in the newly introduced premier state competition.

Whether you’re starting out or hoping to take the next step in your basketball dreams, Ringwood is welcome to all.

Participants

• 3000 members
• 250 junior domestic teams
• 120 senior domestic teams

(Australian basketball legend Shane Heal was a junior at Ringwood)

Ringwood General Manager Ken Harrington on...

What makes Ringwood Basketball special:

“It’s a place where everybody’s welcome. We welcome all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and try to develop them as basketball players and offer programs for everybody.”

“I think that’s the role of community sport.”

(Melbourne Boomers and New Zealand Tall Ferns gun Toni Farnworth represents Ringwood in NBL1)

Being involved in NBL1:

"We absolutely love NBL1."

"It’s just a step up in professionalism, which is what we love. We have limited budgets and not a huge amount of money but it’s not about that, it’s about bringing professionalism and doing the best you can with what you’ve got and we’ve always done that."

"There’s a clear pathway in basketball in Victoria…you’ll come through domestic, you’ll go on to junior representative, you’ll go into senior representative and youth league and then you’ll go into NBL1 or off to college, and then if you’re good enough you can look at NBL."

GET INVOLVED IN LOCAL HOOPS THROUGH THE RINGWOOD BASKETBALL WEBSITE 

Future plans:

"We’d still like to expand."

"After COVID-19, we’ll be rebuilding all of our programs and trying to get as many kids back as we can."

"Last year we sent five kids to college, so we’ll still be hoping we can develop those kids and help reach their dreams of college or NBL1 or NBL or NBA or whatever it is…so we’ll still be working towards that."

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How important it is to return to local basketball post COVID-19 restrictions:

"It’s really, really important not only for the kids but also the clubs."

"People need to get back into basketball to help rebuild their associations, so it’s incredibly important that everyone gets back on board and starts to rebuild the sport and rekindle their dreams in basketball."

"Basketball’s a great sport because it’s indoors for a start and it has the opportunity where you can get better at it by training on your own. Nobody can stop you from improving because you can go to a court or your backyard and improve your game and take it back to training. In a lot of other sports it’s hard to do that."

New Business Directory:

"It’s a way we can have all our 3000 members interconnect with each other."

"If they have a business or a skill, all our members can source that skill from within our group instead of going outside our group. Hopefully that will generate more business during the COVID-19 period which is difficult for everybody."

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE RINGWOOD BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION BUSINESS DIRECTORY

Phoenix Media (26/10/2020)