City of Ballarat Backs Basketball Ballarat

Last night the City of Ballarat voted to consolidate three separate expiring agreements between the City, Ballarat Regional Tourism and Basketball Ballarat into one. They were our Interstate Miners and Rush SEABL program, our Community Engagement & Ambassador Program and our Events Program.

Council unanimously voted to support the proposal and agreed to a new Strategic Partnership valued at $100,0000 per year for the next three years.

This outstanding result positions Basketball Ballarat as the lead regional sports body in Western Victoria.

A summary of our Presentation included:

The SEABL program compete in the second-tier national competition playing on weekly a home and away basis across Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania.

The Rush and Miner’s teams are the only teams in Ballarat that play in a such a competition that has flight equalisation & travel costs which make representation much more expensive.

This program also includes our Home Game television advertising across the WIN network. Our game ads focus visually on Ballarat’s heritage, natural beauty and major attractions. We have a minimum of 300 x 30 sec ads per season that promote Ballarat.

The City of Ballarat logo is also on the back of our Miners and Rush playing uniforms branding and promoting Ballarat as we play across Australia.

Our Healthy Living Program focuses on mentoring in schools, community programs and other youth activities.

Our aim is to actively engage in the community to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle including regular exercise, a balanced diet and social interaction.

We offer Free family tickets for schools, the Ballarat Aquatic & Leisure Centre Holiday Programs and to other local & regional groups each season.

In 2016, we donated free tickets and merchandise to the value of $141K to schools and community groups – all acknowledged as provided with the support of the City of Ballarat.

We support the Yuille Young Parents Program where we provide staff time to manage this program and deliver our Association members donations direct to young parents in need.

We also provide athletes in the school term breaks for community programs representing Council.
This year we created a Community Ambassador Role and appointed Joy Burke to oversee all our elite athletes at schools, mentoring programs and community activities. In 2018, we will add two other Ambassadors with Joy.

Our program work this year includes:

  • A Boys Mentoring Program at Yuille Park
  • Girls Empowerment Program Sebastopol Primary
  • Class sessions with International students at Mt Clear Secondary College
  • Breakfast & Meal Clubs at Delacombe, Mt Clear and Yuille Schools
  • New resident Sudanese Development Programs for children and teenagers
  • Midnight Basketball Program for Youth at Risk
  • We have Introduced a Sunday sports program tailored for Federation Uni International students living on campus with our Sudanese program youth and the international students at Mt Clear College
  • We also support many Library and School reading programs
  • We have also agreed to introduce a mentoring program at Phoenix College and to support a student Leadership Program at the College
  • As we have done in the past with other schools in need we are providing free indoor court space while the College courts are renovated.
  • We also support many local and regional groups with social activities and programs targeted at engaging our youth with the Community.

Our Basketball programs involve:

  • Player engagement at Ballarat Specialist School and for other school and community support programs. We link with at least 50 regional schools each year and our goal is to deliver 100 free clinics per year.
  • Our Primary Schools Competition attracts over 70 school teams
  • Our Aussie Hoops after school program for beginners aged 5-8 attracts 300 children annually

In the Tournament and Event area we DO NOT seek funding for our two annual tournaments which, for forty years, have been delivering 320 plus teams annually for the two x 3-day events that provide up to 14,500 bed nights for our accommodation sector.

We DO seek Funding for those events where the peak body requires a tender hosting fee or to cover external costs to host major events or games.
Our annual WNBL / NBL Exhibition Game & Community Camp Program is one such example.

The Community Camps each year feature a National level exhibition game and a minimum of 4 days of community camps in Ballarat servicing regional schools, disadvantaged kids and coach education programs.

We fully staff, manage and promote all these events at no additional expense to Council.

The exhibition games draw crowds from across western Victoria and the metro area and reaffirm the vision to bring National events to the city while positioning Ballarat as the “Capital” of Western Victoria

Our last Camp agreement committed us to 3 events over 3 years. In fact, we delivered 6 events over 3 years at no extra cost.

Our aim is to host at least two Junior State Sports Championships each year. Such 3-day events contribute the equivalent of 4,000 to 5,500 bed nights depending on the event and number of visiting teams.

With our new facilities, our priority is to secure at least one national event per year in addition to the state level events. As an EXAMPLE of the value of a national event, the 8-day National U/18 Junior Championship in 2015 provided 17,815 bed nights and the economic benefit to Ballarat was independently assessed at $1.7M.

With the peak bodies of basketball, netball and badminton we are already targeting at least one national or international event every year for Ballarat. Tenders for 2019 are starting to be discussed now with the expectation that we will have complaint facilities by then.
In addition to our local work we have a strong Regional Program which we undertake in recognition of the support from the Central Highlands Council group to the B – SEC project. We have committed to providing our Healthy Living Program services across the region and we have secured corporate partnership support to help meet our costs to deliver these services.

In July for instance, we worked in Ararat, Stawell, Horsham, Talbot, Skipton, Ballan and Bacchus Marsh.