The Ararat Redbacks will face the Portland Coasters in the Country Basketball League South West Men's grand final on Saturday, having played their inaugural match against the same opposition almost 27 years ago.
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The community had been integral to the team's formation in 1994.
Former Redbacks players and coach Greg Kerr recalled the efforts made to make the team a reality.
"In the first year, we were just getting organised with sponsors. We had to go around and try and get people on board to support the local team. We couldn't do it without them because we needed some funds to buy uniforms to compete in and for travel," he said.
"We had a really good committee. It was basically the Ararat Amateur Basketball Association Committee and it peeled off to a sort of sub-committee into the Ararat Redbacks team."
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The Redbacks can even attribute their name to the community, as there was a competition held to determine what the team would be called.
Kerr said some alliterations such as 'Ararat Aardvarks' and 'Ararat Animals' had been jokingly suggested, but ultimately it was the Redbacks' that stuck.
The Redback's logo was also created. While it was a striking image of the iconic Australian spider, one minor oversight was that it only had six legs rather than eight, something that has been corrected with the club's present logo.
Once the logistics were sorted, the Redbacks quickly began justifying the support they had received.
The team finished champions of the Western Country Conference in 1994 before going unbeaten in 1995 to repeat the feat. One of the highlights of this season included a 196-90 win against Stawell.
Mark Lever coached the team for the first season before Steven Cronin took over for the second, with Kerr as an assistant coach.
Kerr was also a player in both squads said during that time, they played some fantastic basketball.
"On the open court, we were a real handful. We had lots of different avenues to the basket and the opposition just didn't know who to stop," he said.
"We had some talented players, with the likes of Lee Mooney and Daniel Sutton, they went on to play for the Ballarat Miners. Steve Cronin was also a really good player with the Horsham Hornets for a number of years before he came back to help out the Redbacks.
"We trained twice a week and we took it pretty seriously and I think we had a pretty well-drilled and dedicated team."
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Kerr said what he enjoyed even more than the success was the people he shared it with.
"They were a great bunch to play with," he said.
"It's all about having fun and being with your mates.
"There's a lot of good people involved in basketball, locally as well as within the conferences, we got on well with all the other teams."
The Redbacks will face the Portland Coasters in the grand final at Colac's Bluewater Leisure Centre at 7pm.
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