Good News Story: Harry Armstrong

The Boy From Emerald

Harry Armstrong took a big chance moving from regional Emerald to the big city of Brisbane at the age of 17. Harry joined the BK Basketball Academy, where he could get an education studying a diploma of sport and began volunteering his time as a coach at holiday basketball clinics.

We decided to start our volunteer coach trainings to up-skill coaches and teach them strong leadership and communication skills so that they can have a lasting impact on the younger generation. However, due to the lack of available funds, this proved difficult.

Thanks to Volunteering Queensland, we were able to up-skill over 250 young people and coaches including Harry.

Thanks to our SARC Grant, Harry was able to attend our multiple coaches clinics and learn skills such as drills, fundamentals of coaching, communication and much more from some of the world’s best coaches who had NBL, NBA Academy and professional experience.

Harry has gone on to become a paid coach for our BK Owls Basketball Club, coaching 3 teams.

He also does extremely important work in the community as a youth worker for our Bounce Back program, working with young people who are transitioning out of youth detention. One of our regular athletes gave a glowing review of Harry saying “he is my favourite coach, he has so much energy and makes it so fun”.

After volunteering and participating in our program, Harry has become a strong leader, improved work skills, improved his overall wellbeing, engaged in additional education and training and received the opportunity for paid work. None of this would be possible without the help of the SARC grant.