THE Ballarat Miners will wear pink this weekend to raise awareness of breast cancer organisations in Ballarat.
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As part of the NBL1's traditional Pink Round which coincides with Mother's Day, the Miners have ditched their pink socks, or coaches in pink, for a brand new kit they will wear their home matches against Eltham Wildcats on Saturday night.
The kits will then be auctioned off as part of a fundraising push between the Miners and breast cancer support organisation Ballarat Pink Phoenix, which create packs to assist those diagnosed with breast cancer.
Ballarat Pink Phoenix breast cancer support group member Pauline Prebble said the organisation was thrilled to have the Miners come on board to help raise awareness of what is available to those with breast cancer in Ballarat
"Our involvement is to support the Miners, making it the best week we possibly can, they've been gracious enough to include us with them this week which means we will be able to do more with the car bags we give out," she said.
"At the moment we have a relationship with the McGrath nurses and with that, we want to make sure that everyone who gets treated locally has the opportunity to receive our car bags and these are products that we all thought were useful during chemotherapy and radiation.
"The best part is it is all community-driven, we don't get any outside funding for this, so weeks like this week will be a massive thing to helping this program continue on into the future."
Prebble said the support group and the packages offered opportunities that people may not know about.
"The packages are just a way to help people know they are no on their own, they are not the only to go through this," she said.
"For me personally, I didn't have family in town, so I was desperate to find other people that could have a chat, have a coffee and I found that going to Pink Phoenix, we had face-to-face contact and it was just brilliant for actually being able to sit there.
"I didn't have to worry about if I was bald, or I needed a pick-me-up in some form, it was just the way to go. By giving out these bags, it means we can spread the information about what we do, we can spread services around town and we're able to show a little bit of love to people going through a tough time."
She said people were often felt alone when they were first diagnosed.
"Once you get diagnosed, it's like stepping off a plane into a country where you don't speak the language, you don't know what's out there, you don't know how to interpret things," she said.
"So having the ability to have group like us, where we can say, 'are you aware of this foundation?' or 'Do you need this help?' or whether you have children, we've all been there before, everyone has a little bit of information they can share."
"I absolutely love the pink uniforms and I think the guys and girls look fantastic, I'm looking forward to a big win at the weekend."
Ballarat Basketball chief executive Neville Ivey said the Miners were keen to show their support throughout the round.
"We've got Pink Round in the NBL1 program, but importantly we'd like to provide some messaging and that is on average, 87 people are diagnosed with breast cancer every day in Australia.
"Early detection is vitally important, so if we can be part of providing a message in Ballarat, or assisting with the message, it's very important.
"We'll have some community engagement during the week, we've been very fortunate to be able to partner with Ballarat Pink Phoenix.
"We'll be helping with those care packages, on Wednesday we'll have our luncheon to help raise some funds for the local organisations as well."
