Celebrating Pride Month

June is international Pride month and to celebrate, several of our associations will be hosting Pride games throughout the month. The Pride month theme for this year is Reflect. Empower. Unite. Basketball Victoria has interpreted this theme and taken it a step further for our community. Across an array of bespoke lanyards, towels and t-shirts we have added the message WE ARE ONE.

Recognising Inclusiveness  

Pride month is an opportunity to encourage all our community to help create a safe and inclusive environment for all participants. 

Sheena Atkin, Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Basketball Victoria emphasises how important it is to highlight and celebrate Pride month, ‘We created the tagline - We Are One, as a message of being inclusive and creating a safe environment for everyone that wants to play our game. We all share a love of basketball and that is all that should matter. The basketball community is committed to providing an inclusive environment and welcome anyone to play our game, at all levels.’ 

We know that basketball and sport in general is a powerful vehicle for social development. Social development is about improving the lives of every individual in society so they can reach their full potential.  

Sport is not just about physical activity, it’s about promoting health (physical and mental), fostering cognitive development, teaching positive social behaviour and helps social cohesion. Sport can be used to increase the social capital and social integration of people into the wider community, as well as empowering them and giving them skills to help them give back to the community. 

As a global sport we are at the forefront of demonstrating how easy and important it is to be inclusive, we need to lead the way in uniting our diversity and to show the wider community that basketball does not discriminate, and anyone can take the court to play the sport they love in a safe and inclusive environment. 

Why we to need to do more. 

The LGBTIQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer/Questioning) community make up an estimated  11% of Australia's population, but research shows LGBTIQ+ people have some of the lowest rates of participation in sport, recreation and physical activity out of any community in society. A recent Pride in Sport study also revealed 80 per cent of participants have witnessed or experienced homophobia in sport, and 60 per cent believe a sporting organisation’s positive track record on LGBTIQ+ inclusion would positively influence them to join the sport. 

People still face barriers when trying to enter and participate in sports. They face discrimination and harassment at all levels of sport. For sport to be used as a tool for development and inclusion, we must work together to change the culture in sport to be more welcoming to gender and sexual minorities. Sport has an amazing opportunity to not only increase membership opportunities, but also improve these people's lives. To assist associations, clubs and individuals in creating welcoming and inclusive environments, Basketball Victoria have developed some useful guides to refer to: 

• Promoting Sexual and Gender Diversity in Basketball; and 
• Basketball Victoria’s Inclusive Language Guide. 

For more information and to download these resources please visit our Diversity and Inclusion Resources page here. 

Participating associations 

See below a full list of our participating associations and the Pride games they are hosting across Big V and NBL1 South throughout June. Help us celebrate by wearing the international pride colours at a game this June. 

For more news on Basketball in Victoria, visit Basketball Victoria.