Sayers takes on SBA presidency

SURFCOAST Basketball Association (SBA) has unveiled its new leader with its former treasurer taking up the vacant president’s role.

Leon Sayers officially took over the role of president two weeks ago, but the father of three basketballers is keen to find more ways for the club to connect with the whole community.

“Becoming president is a great new challenge for me leading the committee and the SBA,” Sayers said.

“The committee and the people we have on it make it very much a team effort, I’m well supported, we have a lot of great people, and we have a great core team that does an immense amount of work behind the scenes.”

Sayers originally came onto the SBA’s committee as treasurer in 2018 before serving three years as a general committee member.

He also has three sons who are avid junior basketballers in the SBA: youngest Harrison plays in under 9s, middle child Tarkin is taking a break due to a shoulder injury, while oldest Connor is playing in the SBA’s men’s competition.

Sayers has immediate objectives coming into his new role, particularly in relation to referee shortages, which has a direct impact on the association’s ability to run competitions.

“We need more referees, as is the case with associations across Victoria,” Sayers said.

“We lost a lot of referees due to the pandemic and a lot of them haven’t come back.

“We’ve been running a green shirt program to try and recover our previous numbers but it’s also about supporting them through raising awareness of player behaviour towards officials. This is a key thing driving us forward into the second half of the year.”

Over the past year the Surfcoast Chargers, the SBA’s representative program, has entered four teams into state level leagues for the first time: the Country Basketball League and the Big V.

Sayers said it’s promising to see the SBA expand its pathways from junior to senior level basketball, a direct result of increased participation across the region.

“The sport is absolutely booming around here, even just going from our summer to winter season, we’ve booned again.

“We were expecting a small increase, but instead it was rather significant as more families continue to move into the area.”