Award for access on court

FOR Sally Duncan, her Medal of the Order of Australia is an acknowledgement of everything she’s been taught from an early age.

“It’s about doing something, not just talking about it but actually doing it and making a difference,” she said.

“I wish mum and dad were here to see it because it all comes from them.”

She credits them with instilling a strong volunteer ethos when she was a child.

“They were both very involved in the community, both involved heavily in the RSL, the golf club and in all the sport that we kids were doing,” Ms Duncan said.

“They were always on committees, so we were tagging along learning all of those skills at a very young age.”

Her OAM has been awarded for services to basketball and to people with a disability.

“For me the OAM is a recognition that I’ve made a difference, a difference to people’s lives,” she said.

“I’d prefer it to be about the people and the programs I work with, because that’s where the recognition is needed, I don’t need recognition.”

Basketball has been a major part of her life for more than 50 years.

She first hit the basketball court at age 12 in her hometown of Clunes, Victoria, and played for 45 years until she retired in 2016.

In 1996 she agreed to lend a hand at a Friday night basketball competition for intellectually impaired people.

That spur of the moment decision was the springboard for most of her subsequent volunteer work.

The Friday night competition is now under the umbrella of Power Assist and Ms Duncan has been chair of its board for five years and a director since it was formed in 2001.

It also led to her managing the Victorian state men’s and women’s teams between 1997 and 2007 and supporting them during the annual Ivor Burge Championship.

And she has managed the national women’s intellectually impaired basketball team, the Australian Pearls, since 1999.

“You see these girls come in and they’ll be either shy or they don’t function particularly well in a group environment,” Ms Duncan said.

“By the time they’ve been with you for a little while they can travel, some of the girls travel independently overseas and I would struggle to do that.

“I just love seeing the development of the girls and it’s through sport.”

The Pearls have won a slew of international medals under her watch and she in turn has been acknowledged with several volunteer awards.

The most recent of these was the Virtus International Unsung Hero, 2022.

“I’ve made a difference at an international level for basketball,” she said. “And every Friday night I make a difference by turning up to be the face of Power Assist, always knowing that that’s a safe place for people to come, a place where they can achieve, where they can be happy, where someone will listen and I’m always there.”

Ms Duncan said she had rarely missed a Friday night competition in more than 25 years other than during the COVID pandemic.

“My whole family understands that on Friday night, Sally’s at basketball.”

And if all that wasn’t enough, she also volunteers with the Spartans MSD Basketball Association, the Clunes RSL and she joined Heathcote SES after she and her partner Pete Duncan moved to the district in 2020.