When it comes to basketball, Brendan Joyce has seen it all.
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As coach of the Wollongong Hawks, he watched anxiously as his player rattled home three free throws after the siren to advance to the NBL finals.
A decade and a half later, he coached a depleted Australian Opals team to a bronze medal at the Women's World Championships.
Since returning to Ballarat 15 months ago, he's taken the Miners to the top of the NBL1 ladder and begun work on a pathway to ensure they stay there.
"I've always supported domestic basketball," Joyce, who is the Basketball Ballarat Director of Coaching, said.
"We are the only program that has two NBL1 teams and a youth league program playing in the top grade, both in men and women, and I hope to keep it that way."
While currently at the helm of the men's team, it's the women's program which has become big part of his focus.
As a long-time coach of the Opals, few people know more about the challenges females face, having watched his daughters forced into a career outside of the game.
After spending three years heading the female program at the Australian Institute of Sport, it was no surprise one of his first orders of business in Ballarat was to establish an under-18 girls representative program - something which had been lacking prior to his arrival.
In addition, he's helped establish six new junior representative teams, boys and girls, and supported the appointment of six new female coaches.
"The only program that still needs work is the youth Rush squad, and a big focus for us this year is to improve them like we have the boys," he said.
Elevating the Ballarat Miners youth program was another priority. Upon arrival, Joyce aligned the program with the men's NBL1 squad.
The initiative paid dividends for the Miners youth, which took out the Big V youth league one men's title in 2019.
The success earned the squad a promotion into the Big V men's youth league championship division the following season - the top youth competition in the state.
It coincided with a history-making season for the Miners NBL1 squad, who finished with the best record in the competition for the first time in years.
Sadly the success didn't translate to a championship, with the senior side getting bounced one game short of the decider.
But the result left Joyce bullish. Not just for the Miners but for basketball as a whole.
"The NBL1 was still in its infancy, but it was marketed as good as it has ever been at that level," Joyce said.
He felt the shift at the professional level as well.
After coaching the Hawks to a title during the NBL's golden period in the 1990s and early 2000s, Joyce watched from afar as the game slipped from relevancy for a period from 2006 onward.
However as demand at the grass routes level grew, so too did the NBL, which under the guidance of owner Larry Kestelman, garnered more exposure and eventually free to air TV rights.
"Larry's involvement, along with commissioner Jeremy Loeliger have really stood up and come to the plate in supporting the game financially," Joyce said.
Joyce sees Ballarat as a part of the development process for players in the western region of Victoria. Last year he oversaw the establishment of the Western Region Pathway Program - an initiative for talented individuals not yet good enough for the top senior levels.
It goes hand-in-hand with the opening of the new Ballarat Sports and Events Centre, which Joyce said was built partly to help Ballarat become a hub for basketball development.
While Ballarat is still years away from potentially having a professional team of its own, Joyce said anything was possible with the right sponsorship support and infrastructure.
"There is room to expand the stadium and realistically to have an NBL team you've got to have a 5000-team stadium," he said.
"But in 10-20 years it could happen so never say never."
There is one thing Joyce is sure of: when COVID-19 has run its course, there will be an unprecedented hunger and appetite for sport.
He was hopeful players would be back on-court by July.
"Australians are getting behind the government measures and I think it's really positive," he said.
