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South Australian basketball club Mount Gambier Pioneers was left without a league to play in last year, but has now bounced back into the state's Premier League with a new women's team taking to the court for the first time.
The Pioneers' men's team faced an uncertain future after the dissolving of the South East Australia Basketball League (SEABL) and a rejection from the new elite Victorian competition.
Then just before Christmas the club was thrown a lifeline with its acceptance into the South Australian Premier League.
But there was one condition that made it a frantic off-season — they needed to establish a women's team.
With just three months to form one, the club raced to recruit heavily and put together their debut offering.
For local Melissa Russell, it has provided the chance to return to basketball as a player after initially coming on board as an assistant coach with the team.
She could not pass up the opportunity to wear the Pioneers jersey for the first time.
"[As children] we used to ask for season tickets for our Christmas presents to watch the Pioneers play, so the fact that there's going to be a women's team now — and I'm a part of it — is exciting," she said.
"It's [also] a little bit nerve wracking. I haven't played in this level of competition in quite a while."
The Pioneers' story inspired Amanda Frost from California to sign on to the team as an import for this season.
The significance of this team is not lost on her.
"It made me want to come here just to make a small town into something big," Frost said.
New pathway for female players
The Pioneers have called up several local players to fill the roster, and for up-and-coming female players it means a chance to play in the league much sooner.
"A lot of local girls are getting an opportunity that normally you would have to travel to Adelaide [for]," Russell said.
"You would have to spend some good quality seasons sitting on the bench, and these girls are going to be able to step in and have a crack at a really good league."
The men's team captain Tom Daly has noticed the buzz around the women's team and the opportunity it opens to a whole new set of fans.
"I think that's the real silver lining of what's happened," Daly said.
Russell said it was an important moment in the club's history.
"I coach under 12s and I think, just for their age group, to be able to look up and say, 'I want to be a Pioneers women's player when I'm older' [is] just something to aim for and [now] a bit more of a realistic goal," she said.
"It's crazy how quickly we've been able to turn things around and be able to get, hopefully, a really competitive side together."
Rebuilding a challenge for the men's team
For the men's team, however, the previous uncertainty of another year without a league meant a lot of players from the last season had left to play for other teams.
"It was tough. We went through a lot of soul searching, trying to figure out why this was happening to us," Daly said.
According to the head coach of the men's team, Richard Hill, rebuilding has been a struggle.
"We couldn't recruit from Adelaide," he said.
"There was so much uncertainty in regard to our future and the recruiting restrictions that were placed upon us made it very difficult."
The process has not only impacted on the team, but the community of Mount Gambier as well.
"It was difficult. Our families went through it as well, and a lot of people I know in the community went through it," Daly said.
"But we hung tough and we're happy to be where we are now."
This weekend, both the men's and women's teams will play their first games of the season against the North Adelaide Rockets.
Topics: sport, basketball, women, community-and-society, mount-gambier-5290, mount-gambier-east-5291, mount-gambier-west-5291