00:00It's Canberra's oldest basketball club.
00:05Dodgers on three! One, two, three, Dodgers!
00:09And now with almost 700 registered players across 74 teams,
00:14the Western Creek Woden Dodgers have grown to be one of the largest
00:18community sporting organisations in the ACT.
00:21We believe we could expand a lot further if we had the facilities to do so.
00:26The Dodgers don't have a central home court,
00:28with teams training across seven different venues in the south of Canberra.
00:32The club says all of the venues are below competition standard,
00:36with many of the courts having unsafe flooring, non-compliant hoops
00:40and inadequate maintenance.
00:42Access to quality, high-quality training facilities is certainly
00:46the greatest barrier for us to really nurture a sense of community.
00:52The club brought those concerns to an assembly inquiry,
00:55looking into barriers and opportunities for participation in community sport.
00:59The committee has heard similar sentiments from other sporting clubs.
01:03The beauty is there are so many people in Canberra who want to be involved in sport.
01:09It's whether or not the infrastructure can service everyone doing the sport
01:13that they want to do where they want to do it.
01:15The committee has previously heard most community sports groups rely on facilities
01:19such as gymnasiums and ovals at public schools, which are sometimes expensive to hire.
01:24Schools and the government doesn't make any money out of hiring those facilities out to community groups.
01:29It is cost neutral and it is purely for minor maintenance and cleaning.
01:35The committee is due to report back recommendations early next year,
01:39but sporting clubs are already making their wish list known.
01:42Our number one goal is to have some new courts, a new multi-court facility in Woden.
01:48That's sort of our dream.
01:50Every sport wants us to build them something, which is absolutely fine.
01:53We just have to, you know, try and make it work for everybody.
01:57Competing for support.
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