A Weekend of Celebrating the History of Blacktown Basketball
Last weekend, it was the annual Heritage Round of the Waratah Senior League (WSL) Season. The chance for associations to recognise the history in basketball across the league. We took this opportunity to reflect on our full history of our many iterations, from Demons to Storm, and put on a great show across our social media pages, and at our weekend home games. You can always check out the ever-updating History page here!
Scroll Down Memory Lane:
2009-2016
We celebrated the 2009-2016 Blacktown Storm, with many social media comments of players reminiscing of their good-old days. In this iteration, the Blacktown West Basketball Club was run and operated by the Kevin Betts Stadium crew and saw the first club banner - the 2012 Waratah Youth League Division One Men League Champions!
Over this period, the Blacktown West Basketball Club received the 2011 Waratah Youth League Division One Men Coach of the Year to Greg Bradford, 2012 Basketball NSW Team of the Year with the Youth League Champions squad, and saw 8 Sydney Junior League (now MJL) Championships, 5 teams with the State (Cup/Shield) Championships, and 11 teams as Runners Up in the Sydney Junior League. These accolades, amongst all junior and senior awards, can be seen in the CBBA Office at KBS!
2017-2019
From there, we celebrated the 2017-2019 era - a new logo and new management near the end of this stint led to 2 championship teams at the 2019 State Cup - the U12 Boys and U18 Boys, alongside 6 teams’ coming 2nd in the Metro Junior League Grand Finals!
Basketball NSW and the City of Blacktown Basketball Association continued to grow their partnerships with the Sydney Kings NBL team - allowing for many Storm kids to see their heroes ball out at the Afterpay Arena (then Qudos Bank Arena).
Many of our community families making up representative, domestic and beginner programs, whether that be coaching, playing or volunteering - many stem from this recent era!
2020-Now
The current era of the City of Blacktown Basketball Association continues to see success every year and season. In the 2020s, we’ve seen:
A partnership with the Blues Wheelchair Basketball Club, which led to 3 consecutive years of Storm teams in the Wheelchair League - and the associations’ 2nd ever Waratah Championship - the 2025 Waratah Wheelchair League Division 2 Champions
5 MJL Winning teams, with three in 2021
7 MJL Runners-Up Trophies
The 2025 U14 Boys D1 Champions - leading to Blacktown Storm teams in the Junior Premiere League for the first time
A strengthened representative pathway, including two teams in all age groups/genders in the Metro Junior Leagues AND Waratah Youth Leagues, alongside a senior Men’s and Women’s Waratah League team in the purple and gold
Home Games - Saturday 30th May and Sunday 31st May
Over 200 people came and celebrated history at Kevin Betts Stadium on Heritage Weekend - where we saw our three Youth League teams and eight Junior League teams compete against Bankstown, Coffs Harbour, Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai, Marrickville and Norths!
We started with the Waratah 2 Youth Men that had an incredible display of dominance and athleticism - defeating the Coffs Harbour Suns 101-57. We saw some incredible passing, hustle and dunks - and a great pre-game vocal/guitar performance from CBBA Community Member Lauren Callo.
Then, the Waratah 1 Youth Women challenged the Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai Spiders across all four quarters, just being defeated 66-88 in a close-quarters battle.
Finally, the Waratah 1 Youth Men caught on fire for the first half - but an 11 to 30 run meant an intense 4th quarter where the Storm just won 83-78.
Each game saw an awesome half-time performance from the Australian Rhythmic Gymnastics showing off their athleticism, cheer and dance to the Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life!
CBBA wants to recognise the incredible community support across our Heritage Round Saturday Night - with many comments, photos, and stories shared and loud cheers for the Blacktown Storm Youth League teams! Check out some photos from @jbcollective.media !
Our juniors had an awesome day of hoops on Courts 1 and 2! With 8 teams playing at home, and 7 away, the scores were as follows: (BOLD signifies a Win)
| Division | Home Team | Home Score | d/db | Away Team | Away Score | Division | Home Team | Home Score | d/db | Away Team | Away Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U12 Girls Div 2 | Penrith Panthers 2 | 29 | db | Blacktown Storm Purple | 51 | U14 Girls Div 3 | Manly Warringah Sea Eagles White | 30 | db | Blacktown Storm Gold | 34 |
| U12 Boys Div 2 | Blacktown Storm Purple | 51 | db | Marrickville Spirit Blue | 68 | U18 Boys Div 3 | Blacktown Storm Gold | 87 | d | Parramatta Cumberland 1 | 77 |
| U18 Boys Div 1 | Blacktown Storm Purple | 102 | d | Marrickville Spirit Blue | 89 | U12 Girls Div 3 | Bulls Basketball 1 | 46 | db | Blacktown Storm Gold | 6 |
| U12 Boys Div 4 | Blacktown Storm Gold | 62 | d | Parramatta Cumberland 2 | 50 | U14 Girls Div 1 | Parramatta Cumberland 1 | 54 | db | Blacktown Storm Purple | 37 |
| U16 Boys Div 1 | Blacktown Storm Purple | 90 | db | Bankstown Bruins White | 101 | U16 Boys Div 2 | Blacktown Storm Gold | 68 | db | Norths Bears Red | 86 |
| U14 Boys Div 3 | Manly Warringah Sea Eagles Black | 38 | db | Blacktown Storm Gold | 45 | U18 Girls Div 3 | Hawkesbury Jets | 74 | db | Blacktown Storm Gold | 30 |
| U16 Girls Div 2 | Blacktown Storm Purple | 62 | d | Marrickville Spirit Blue | 59 | U18 Girls Div 2 | Blacktown Storm Purple | 53 | db | Norths Bears White | 56 |
| U16 Girls Div 2 | Manly Warringah Sea Eagles White | 54 | db | Blacktown Storm Gold | 88 |
Here are some photos across our Junior Home games to finish off this one! As always, the photo galleries are added to our social media pages, which you should follow!
