OUR NEW COAT OF ARMS

No doubt many of you would have seen our new coat of arms on our uniforms images. If not, our uniform and polo designs are below. A crucially important part of any sports club or program is it’s culture both on and off the court. As a sports program in it’s in fancy we have wanted to establish that culture from the very start and our coat of arms is a crucial tool in that effort.

 

 

There is quite a bit of meaning and history behind our coat of arms, so we have put this page together to explain it. Check out this detail and history below.

 

OUR NEW COAT OF ARMS COLOURS

The colours embedded into our Coat of Arms is a combination of our two Logos in the “Templars” and the “Warriors”. For the Templar Logo we have Black White and Red and for the Warriors Logo we have the Blue, White and Gold.

OUR LOGOS

One of the unique things about the BMBA is we embrace two logos not the one. This evolved in a straight forward way.

The Warriors Logo was designed back in 2009 for my former Association and Club, the Oakleigh Basketball Association and the Glen Eira Warriors Basketball Club. Between 2009 and 2016 these two basketball organisations run what was I believe to be  the best coaching program, domestic competitions and representative programs in Melbourne.

 

Those programs were innovative, professional and transparent and delivered coaching, training and competitions of the highest standards. Through outside forces those organisations were literally torn down and 500 families lost access to the wonderful tuition, mentoring, coaching, training and comradery that they enjoyed for seven years. Through the BMBA we are determined to bring all of that back in bigger and better way.

 

The Warriors logo will always be a big part of our beating heart at the BMBA.

 

Amongst the basketball community the “Warriors’ tag/logo has become all too common, which can probably be attributed to the success of the Golden State Warriors in the NBA. When starting the BMBA we wanted something that was not only in keeping with our “Warriors” history but would 

 

(1) have us stand out from other clubs and associations 

(2) would reflect the culture that we are trying to build and 

(3) on a personal reflect my own journey in the sport.

 

After much deliberation I settled on the Templars. The templars were a medieval order of Christian knights that were fierce warriors, who were the equivalent of todays special forces units. As well as being Warriors for a cause they had complete faith in they lived by a code of honour in service to others. 

 

We want to build our own code of honour for our culture both on and off the court.

 

Finally no other club that we coudl find used the Templar brand as it’s logo, so the Templar Warriors was decided upon.

 

THE GOLDEN WREATH

Wreaths have had a symbolic meaning in Western culture and history for over 2,000 years. Woven from leaves and flowers and shaped in either a circle or a horseshoe shape that was worn around the head, wreaths have, since antiquity, symbolised glory, power and immortality. Not bad goals to strive for! 

 

In ancient Greece, golden wreaths were introduced as a reward for victory in athletic competitions, military endeavours and musical and poetic contests. Winners of the Olympic Games, which were first held in 776 BCE and occurred every four years, were awarded a wreath made of golden olive leaves.

 

While we want to mentor our players and participants and build a culture that develops them as much as a person as it does as an athlete in basketball, we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that everything we do in our on the court pursuits is to achieve our very best in our basketball endeavours.  Through that hopefullu some basketball glory will follow as it did for ancient greek athletes.

OUR LATIN SLOGAN - "FORTITUDO, HONOR, UNITAS"

Like so many other coat of arms we wanted to have a Latin slogan, but not for the reasons you may suspect. We wanted something that would encourage discussion about our culture, about our code and about what we stand for. Our hope is when we people see our coat of arms one of the first things they will ask is what the Latin stands for. Our response will be as below:

 

Fortitudo means Strength: 

Strength for us covers the following. 

 

(1) Strength of Character – We want to develop players with strong character traits. On the court things such as honesty through their efforts, with no short cuts in our training, an embrace of our development goals and strength through each other and the comradery we develop. Off and on the court we want our players to demonstrate strength in the way they support each other, especially when times become challenging as eventually they will, strength to resist the temptations to do things we know are not right, the strength to stand up for each other and the strength to offer a shoulder to a teammate under duress. 

 

Honesty, work ethic, trust in each other, compassion and an ability to treat others as you would like to be treated. These are character traits that we believe builds strong individuals and together Strength for us covers the following.

 

(2) Strength of purpose – With whatever we do in life we want to complete our tasks with purpose. This is especially so in sport and within our program. Players will be provided with skills challenges and the ability to test both their skills and knowledge they obtain. While we will provide elite level coaching, nothing beats some self-motivation combined with purpose and drive to improve and learn. 

We also want to develop and implement that strength of purpose in competition. The ability to keep pushing ourselves for greater efforts especially on defence in passing to better positioned players to focus on coaches and and instructions and the resistance to play the victim and instead embrace feedback and to see opportunity where the temptation may be to see adversity.

 

Any player who develops these traits on the court will be well placed in their lives off the court.

 

(3) Strength in adversity – Probably the most important category under our strength aspect. Whether in your normal life or your sporting one, adversity will come and when it does we need the strength to be resilient, to support each other and to work together to overcome any adversity that is placed in our way. It’s the ultimate test of character in team sports. When faced with adversity weak teams, will snipe, point fingers at others for blame, and conduct whispering campaigns at convenient targets. 

 

Strong teams will stay united, will do everything they can to support each other and embrace the sense of purpose mentioned above to work through tougher times, by simply working to improve every time they take the court. My most satisfying seasons as a coach weren’t when we won everything or those rare occurrence where you may have an undefeated season. My most satisfying seasons were those where you had to overcome losing patches within a season, overcome your doubts and motivate others to overcome theirs and then watch as your team turned around a season for ultimate success.

 

Other seasons which gave me my most satisfaction as a coach were actually losing seasons where I knew the players I coached gave it all they had and kept working every week to improve, when you do that you never lose, no matter what the scoreboard says. When you do that not too long after winning seasons happen.

 

 

Honor means Honour: 

Honour for us means the following. 

 

(1) Honour in our effort – The way we work towards achieving our goals and to improve ourselves is an honourable pursuit. Many people are content to drift through life without challenging themselves, we want to inspire our juniors to be more honourable that and to dare to dream big and pursue those dreams. The honour is then in the effort to achieve those dreams and goals, whether successful or not in that endeavour. Making a legitimate effort is an honourable effort and will lead to success in future challenges.

 

(2) Honour in the way we play – Basketball is game where players can be easily tempted to be selfish in their pursuits during a game. With a plethora of stats covering the game, players can become absorbed with points they scored while ignoring the more team building stats that help teams to win games. 

 

When a Templar Warrior teams takes the court we want our players to understand their roles and what is important for them in those roles to help their team to win. In many instances this will require players to sacrifice the more enticing parts of the game for their team to win. A team with players willing to do this will play with honour and in doing so give themselves the greatest chance of success.

 

(3) Honour through resilience – Sport like life, can present us with numerous challenges and awkwardly at times we least expect them. When we encounter those challenges on the court, we want to stay resilient in our endeavour and effort, we want to embrace our team structures and rules even more and resist the urge to change things on our own. We want to draw on each other for support and encouragement and we want to always put forward our best effort and even when it seems futile. 

 

In doing so, we will ultimately achieve what even we may have thought was impossible. Even if we fail, yet we achieve this we will have played with honour and succeeded. 

 

 

Unitas means Unity:

Unity for us covers the following. 

 

(1) Unity through Endeavour – One of the most important aspects of unity is actually when our players work on their game individually. Whether that working on improving their skills or improving their knowledge of the game and basketball IQ though studying plays and videos to understand our team offensive and defensive structure. If every player in a BMBA team commits to this they will ensure they truly play as team unified in their effort. The most difficult time to imprve your game is when you work on your own, it’s always easier to work as a group, when every player within a team knows each of their teammates is working to improve in their own time, they will work to improve themselves through and obligation to their team.

 

Every player working alone to ensure team success is the ultimate act of unity

 

(2) Unity through support – We all will have times where we don’t achieve what we want, where we go through periods of self doubt. That could be during a game, through a series of games or even throughout a season. It’s through these times that players need their teammates and coaches to lean upon for support and for those same coaches and teammates to be aware of a player in need of support. A unified team will build each other up, not only by what thy say but what they do. A player giving up a chance to score so that their teammate can, to help build that players confidence, is an example of an action of support. A unified team will find and recognise these opportunities all the time.

 

(3) Unity through teamwork – The most obvious achievement of unity is how we play as a team on the court. When players all perform their roles without question and without hesitation a wonderful chemistry can happen on the court. When five players move and work together with purpose on the court and the team achieves something together, whether that is a defensive stop of a simple basket, every player involved is a part of that achievement. A unified team understands this and will recognise it as a group. A true team cannot achieve anything significant without each other, a unified team will not only strive to achieve the ultimate in teamwork, they will realise it is the beating heart of what unity truly represents. No one person more important than the other, nobody able to achieve anything without the other. When teams achieve this they evolve from a team into a family through sport.