There’s no doubt the Australian basketball program is one of the strongest in the world. Australia is ranked No. 9 in the FIBA men’s ladder with fourth place finishes at the 1988, 1996 and 2000 Olympics. The women’s team, called the Opals, is even more successful with a gold at the 2006 Olympics and three silvers at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 FIBA World Championships, now known as the FIBA World Cup.
Three Australians have been enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame, namely, Lindsay Gaze and his son Andrew and Al Ramsay. In the NBA today, there are three high-profile Australians playing – Golden State center Andrew Bogut and San Antonio Spurs cagers Patty Mills and Aaron Baynes. An Australian Bob Elphinston used to be FIBA president and who can forget Luc Longley of the Chicago Bulls? Longley is now an assistant coach with the Australian men’s squad, named the Boomers, and will be in Spain for the coming FIBA World Cup.
Basketball New South Wales (BNSW) is the largest basketball organization in Australia with over 60,000 registered players and 85 affiliated associations playing about 900 games every weekend throughout the state. The man in charge of BNSW as CEO is a Filipino, Danny Martinez, a Letran graduate who migrated to Australia in 1986. Martinez has worked full-time as BNSW the last 13 years and is an influential figure in Australian basketball.
Last November, Martinez met PBA chairman Ramon Segismundo and PBA commissioner Chito Salud in Sydney to discuss possible joint undertakings. They talked about bringing over PBA teams to Australia for a game, a PBA-NBL All-Star series and an exchange program related to officiating and player development. The NBL or National Basketball League is Australia’s version of the NBA or PBA.
From the discussions, it was agreed to send two top-grade Australian referees to Manila to conduct an officiating seminar for PBA arbiters before the start of the 40th season. Martinez and two referees are now confirmed to arrive here on July 14. A four-day workshop has been scheduled for classroom and court sessions.
* * * *
The referees are John Martin and Alan Garraway. Their resumes are impressive. Martin was a FIBA referee from 1975 to 1986 and has been a FIBA referee evaluator since 1990. He has authored several officiating manuals and is considered the leading expert in his field. FIBA has recognized his contributions to the sport with the prestigious Radomir Shaper Award, named in honor of the late Serbian who served as president of FIBA’s Technical Commission. Martin is an inductee of both the Basketball Australia and BNSW Halls of Fame.
Garraway, a retired FIBA licensed referee, remains active as an arbiter in the NBL, the Big V League and the South Eastern Basketball League. He was the FIBA Oceania U-19 Championships referee commissioner last year. Garraway has conducted officiating seminars in Australia, New Zealand and American Samoa.
BNSW Asia-Pacific senior development manager Amado (Ding) de Villa, another Filipino based in Sydney, said the first day of the workshop will take up Games Management in the lecture room, Principles of the 3-Man Crew (lecture room and on-court), Exam and Fitness Test (lecture room and on-court) and evening games. The second day will involve an assessment of the performance of the referees in the evening games and discuss how to use video reviews, the marking of exam papers and discussion and an evaluation of materials covered.
The third day will cover the Principles of Evaluation (lecture room), Principles of Referee Coaching (lecture room), exam review (lecture room) and review of referee coaching techniques with live action during evening games. The fourth day will revisit the use of video reviews and discuss the trends and changes in basketball refereeing world-wide.
The BNSW is closely working with the 18-year-old New South Wales Institute of Sport which takes care of at least 700 high-performance athletes in team and individual sports. Segismundo said the workshop won’t just be about officiating mechanics and rules. He described it as a “holistic” training where the PBA referees will be exposed to developing a positive attitude, professional behavior and a decisive mindset.
The referees will return to Australia on July 18 but Martinez will stay in town until July 21 to explore more possibilities of joint projects.
* * * *
There’s a new sports show on the ABS-CBN Sports+Action and Balls channels and it’s called “Team U.” Main hosts in the all-new sports documentary and advocacy program are Piolo Pascual and Gerald Anderson. In fact, Pascual and Anderson are the show’s co-producers with Fr. Tito Caluag and Eski Ripoll. Director is Mark Salamat. “Team U” premiered last June 15.
The 30-minute show, now on its fourth episode, is aired 11:30 a.m. Sundays on ABS-CBN Sports+Action with a 1:30 p.m. replay Mondays on Balls. It features instructionals and inspiring interviews on basketball with Marco Benitez, football with Armand del Rosario and volleyball with Gretchen Ho. Other sports are also lined up in the series.
“Our goal is to help young Filipino athletes realize their dreams through inspirational stories,” said Ripoll. “We’re featuring stories of young men and women in sports who are on a quest to bring pride and glory to the country through their athletic talents. ‘Team U’ presents the reality that a lot of young Filipino athletes have that inborn knack for being athletic but that is something that often remains undiscovered and unfulfilled due to a lack of support, access to financial aid, scholarships, proper training gear and the like. It is with that ‘Team U’ also aims to encourage viewers and organizations from both public and private sectors to be part of building a Sports School, an institution to develop athletes through proper training and development under the wing of acclaimed sports practitioners.”
For its first season, the show will visit three schools that may be tapped as pilot regional campuses for the Sports School – Rizal High School in Pasig, Abellana High School in Cebu and the General Santos City High School.