BASKETBALL Victoria is excited to announce the 2024 Victorian Ivor Burge State teams who will compete alongside our Under 20 teams at the National Championships beginning on 30 January, 2024.
With home court advantage in Ballarat, the best Victorian athletes with an intellectual disability will take on the rest of the nation on January 30 - February 4, 2024.
The format of the 2024 Ivor Burge competition will see the women’s event back to the traditional structure of 5 x 5 (from 3 x3 last year) the men’s competition will be 5 x 5.
“It’s a great to see so many new faces in the prestigious Ivor Burge Competition at the National Championships,” Basketball Victoria’s General Manager – High Performance Grant Wallace said. “We have had great success at this tournament in the past and it is a fantastic community feeling within the teams who all support each other over the week-long event”.
The 2024 Ivor Burge Teams:
Women
Evangeline Patterson
Jessica McCulloch
Jordi-Ella Groenewegen
Kate Leckenby
Kate Zonneveld
Mia Wilson
Montana Haag
Rachael Potter
Rebecca Koch
Taila Martin
Emergencies
Indianna Haag-Witherden
Maddison Tanner
Sophie Hughes
Men
Adam Horne
Bailey Ohlsen
Dylan Cheyne
Frazer Dawber
Jake De La Motte
James Myers
Luke Nicholls
Matthew Farrar
Michael Crighton
Ryan Lethlean
TJ (Taperi) Leifi
Development Players
Andreas Lawrence
Brock Carmichael
Gow Deng
Michael Synders
Tyler Bergin
ABOUT THE IVOR BURGE CHAMPIONSHIPS
The Australian Basketball team for people with an Intellectual Disability made their international debut at the 1992 Paralympic Games in Barcelona.
Both Men and Women’s teams competed in the event; the Women won the Gold Medal and the Men finished sixth. It was the first Gold medal won by an Australian National Team in Basketball at any international event.
After such a successful Paralympic campaign the Australian Sports & Recreation Association for People with an Intellectual Disability (AUSRAPID), together with Basketball Australia, created the Ivor Burge Championship.
It was decided to title the Tournament the Ivor Burge Championship as Ivor Burge (a Victorian) is considered one of the founding fathers of Basketball in this country. Although he went to college in Springfield, Massachusetts, after graduating he came back to Australia to promote the game further.
Burge produced the first standardised rulebook for the sport in October 1928 and founded the Victorian Basketball Association in 1931. He continued to help promote Basketball in Victoria through his position with the YMCA until 1940.
In 1941, he became the inaugural Director if Physical Education at the University of Queensland. In 1946 Burge was involved in the writing of the Constitution of Basketball Australia and founded the Queensland Amateur Basketball Association. He was appointed the Associations first President, a position he held until 1954.
In 1992, he was awarded life membership of the Australian Basketball Federation and in 2004 was an inaugural inductee into the Basketball Australia Hall of Fame.
The inaugural Ivor Burge championship was held in Wollongong in 1995 when Victoria won Gold in both the Men’s and Women’s divisions.
