‘You’ve broken my kid’s heart’: Waitlists for basketball are so long, parents are signing up in kindergarten

Over the past decade, the Hills Basketball Association has done everything it can to increase the number of junior players it can include in its competitions in Sydney’s rapidly growing north-west.

In 2017, it built an extra two courts in its original Castle Hill stadium. A year later it took out a lease on a recreational centre at Dural, before doing the same on the courts at a Kellyville sports complex.

Still, last competition CEO Steve Burke had to turn away 70 teams, each with about seven players. They have just finished their draw for the next season. They will be turning away 80.

Northern Suburbs Basketball Association, pictured, has a waitlist of three years. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

“We get a fair bit of criticism. People say: ‘You’ve broken my kid’s heart, they just want to play basketball,’” said Burke.

“I am now cutting waitlists for our skills classes off at a couple of hundred kids. Otherwise, we are just giving false hope. We will never get to them.”

Sport NSW’s Playing Catch Up report, published at the end of last year, found NSW needed 136 more basketball courts to meet its current demand.

Basketball NSW CEO Maria Nordstrom said it was seeing significant waitlists for competitions from the lower north shore up to the Hills, but the problem was Sydney-wide.

“We estimate there are about 10,000 kids per year who are missing out on playing basketball,” she said. Player numbers across junior and senior teams have grown 67 per cent since 2018.

On a local Facebook group, parents swap war stories of waiting for three years with a full team for a spot at Northern Suburbs Basketball Association at Crows Nest.

One mother said she had no idea how to get her daughter into the comp having not done so in kindergarten, remarking the association was harder to get into than a private school.

“How does an 11yo [sic] join a basketball team when their mother didn’t have the foresight to sign them up in Kindy? Seems all friends are in teams that have less availability than the property market and getting a new team enrolled in a comp is more difficult than getting enrolled in private school,” the post said.

Norths CEO Bret Mactavish said a three-year wait was “a fair assessment” of the problem, noting the list was probably an underestimate, given many parents never join when they realise how long it is.

In addition to the draw of the professional game, particularly the US NBA competition and the success of Australian players abroad, Mactavish said the popularity of basketball for children was driven by the sport not being gender-specific, as well as being able to be played year-round and inside.

But while the all-weather, all-year nature of the sport is one of its biggest drawcards, it is also a major limitation for growth.

Like the Hills association, Norths now has leases on multiple courts in addition to its Crows Nest stadium, making use of facilities including at North Sydney Boys High School, Willoughby Leisure Centre and Redlands at Mosman.

“We just have this lack of availability for courts,” Mactavish said.

Nordstrom said part of the problem was a lack of willingness from councils to invest in indoor venues, compared to outdoor spaces. She said there were about 180 potential courts in the pipeline across the state, at various stages of the approval and funding process.

They include the controversial $75 million Lane Cove Recreation Centre, as well as a multi-sport facility in Penrith.

“The challenge with the current state government is we know there is no funding for infrastructure,” Nordstrom said.

The Sport NSW report called for an $8 million investment in community sport. Before their election, NSW Labor responded with promises to up funding for the state’s sport organisation support program to $5 million in 2023-24 and $10 million per year thereafter.

Sports Minister Steve Kamper said the government would “absolutely be honouring [its] election promises”, however remained tight-lipped on the details.

“We will have more to announce for community sport infrastructure when our September budget is handed down,” he said.

The NSW budget will be delivered on Tuesday.

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