Two basketball referees from Warragul have been recognised by Basketball Victoria, with Brodie McLachlan and Fletcher Smith awarded the Senior Male Referee of the Year and Junior Male Referee of the Year respectively.
McLachlan won the Rod Bush award for the Senior Male Referee of the Year, named after Rod, who was the head of the country referees for a time when he was coming up through the ranks as a junior.
“Winning the award, it was really humbling, especially since I’ve known Rod for a long time,” he said.
McLachlan began as a referee when he was just 11 after playing basketball throughout his junior years. When his teammates and opponents began to grow taller, he didn’t, so he decided to take a different route.
“I was playing basketball and I just wanted to make some money. I didn’t really have a passion for reffing when I started,” he said. “I was actually a bad-tempered kid, but when I started reffing, I thought to myself I could grow to like this. I stopped growing when everyone else didn’t, so I decided to keep at reffing,” he added.
When McLachlan began to excel as a ref, he was able to further his career at a very young age, controlling under 18 games at 12 years old, before moving onto Big V tournaments at just 14.
When he was 16 however, McLachlan suffered a suspension, which ultimately made him rethink his sporting endeavours.
“I had a bit of a life lesson when I was 16, so after that I decided to really go after it,” he said.
After continuing to referee games through his 20s, he felt stagnant and that he wasn’t going anywhere, but decided to keep at it, which paid off.
By the time he was 25, McLachlan had been selected to ref SEABL games, before heading to the Under 20’s National Championships in Canberra.
“I went as a backup both times to that, so I thought for me it was sort of like a holiday,” he laughed. “I did learn a lot from the other refs there though, three of them are on the NBL panel now, so to learn from them was great,” he said.
The next year though, it wouldn’t be a holiday.