Six years ago, Sutherland Shire Council received a request from a handful of local children: with no basketball courts in the area, could they put up a hoop?
The popularity of the “half court” at Lilli Pilli led to others in Cronulla, Engadine and Menai, providing a way to play in a city where councils do not have the cash or space for full courts.
Nathan Todd uses a half basketball court in Cooper Street Reserve, Engadine.Credit: Janie Barrett
Sutherland Shire councillor and former mayor Carmelo Pesce said if 10 new courts popped up overnight, there still would not be one hoop in the Shire left unused.
“It’s just been overwhelming,” Pesce said. “Kids are there day and night … I’m actually quite shocked by how much people want to use them.”
More than 95,000 players were registered with the state’s basketball association at the end of 2023 – almost double the 51,000 recorded in 2017.
But surging participation has outpaced the number of courts available. Organisers across NSW turned away 10,000 players over the past year.
The problem is acute on Sydney’s northern beaches, where almost 4000 children have been turned away in recent seasons.
Northern Beaches Mayor Sue Heins called the lack of indoor basketball venues a “perennial problem”, which made informal sporting spaces “so important”.
Three half-courts in Mona Vale and Killarney Heights will be built in the coming months, and a new full-court will open in Narraweena this month.
“Half-court basketball is actually a great way of utilising that extra piece of space, if the young people in that area really want that because they do seem to highly utilise it,” Heins said.
Half courts, no bigger than 20 metres long or wide, generally cost less than $100,000 and can go decades without major maintenance, making them a very different financial proposition to multimillion-dollar indoor facilities.
Parramatta Council is betting on half courts as it prepares for its population to surpass 400,000 by 2040.
Construction of three half courts began in August, while outgoing mayor Pierre Esber hopes at least six more courts will be approved in the next four years.
“We don’t have acres and acres of open space. So with any park we get, we treat it like royalty,” Esber said. “If councils provide these facilities, the young folk will follow.”
The surge in demand for half courts has prompted some soul-searching for Basketball NSW, which is staring down an exodus of players.
Basketball NSW chief executive Maria Nordstrom said the lack of indoor facilities threatened the grassroots growth of the game.
“If [players] don’t get access, they will go and do something else,” Nordstrom said.
“We need to question our role, I think, as a state body. Is our role to only cater for the organised part of the sport, or is our role to cater for everything and really provide more opportunity for people to play basketball overall?
“We need to look at the model where people can come and shoot and play.”
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