We’re pleased to announce that Epping Storm Basketball Club has been selected as one of the recipients – a junior basketball club with over twenty years of experience operating in the northern suburb of Wollert.
We recently sat down with the President of the club, Kerry Ruston, to learn a bit more about Epping Storm and how they plan to use their funding.
Tell us a little bit about Epping Storm Basketball Club?
We started back in 2001 as a junior basketball club for the northern suburbs, and over the last twenty years have grown to have over 200 members across all our levels. We provide classes for all ages, from the little ones in our under 8’s program all the way up to our young adults in the under 20’s league.
We are fully staffed by volunteers who love doing what they do and we ’are committed to being a family- oriented club. We are exceedingly proud of all our players, and it is a joy to watch them develop their skills and confidence and grow from children into young adults.
How did you hear about the Community Grants program and why did you decide to apply?
I learnt about the Community Grants program through an email from Whittlesea Council. We just happened to be looking for a way to subsidise some upcoming fees for our families and this email came through at the perfect time!
We are grateful for Cedar Woods’ Community Grants program running again this year. We are always on the lookout for grants and funding opportunities to support our team, and so we decided to apply.
How will you be using your funding and how will this help to support Epping Storm Basketball Club?
We will be using this funding to help subsidise the cost of purchasing reversible singlet tops for our existing players.
This might seem like a small purchase, but this is going to be a massive help for Epping Storm as we are currently doing a lot of running around on game days to supply players with the different coloured singlet tops required for different games.
This places a lot of time pressure on our volunteers - as there is often a tight turnaround between games - and can also be quite stressful for the kids who are waiting at the game for their uniform to arrive.
By giving our players reversible singlet tops we can make sure that they have everything they need on game day. This will relieve a lot of the stress on our players and volunteers who can now just focus on playing the game, and most importantly, having fun!
The funding provided will also help to relieve some of the financial pressures our families are experiencing by subsidising at least half of the price of these singlet tops.
We greatly appreciate this grant and would like to thank Cedar Woods for their generosity. It has been a wonderful experience and I am so glad that we decided to apply.