It doesn’t take much imagination to wonder why young basketballer Lucas Impey went straight to his parents when asked about his sporting heroes.
His mother Jodi played more than 300 Big V games across Melbourne, while his father Christian played high school basketball in America and has coached for more than 20 years.
“I grew up on basketball courts around Victoria,” Impey said.
“My earliest memories are watching mum play and dad coach. I was always destined to follow in their footsteps.”
Impey’s sporting journey started as a five-year-old playing in the under-8 competition at Melton.
He made his first representative team as a bottom age player in the under-12 team.
“I played with many teams as I was growing up,” he said last week. “We followed mum’s playing career around to Keilor, Werribee and back to Broadmeadows.
“Right now, I am playing with Ballarat in the NBL [National Basketball League] 1 [South] and the [Big V] youth league team.”
Impey might be the youngest player in the team, and one of the youngest in the competition, but he doesn’t look out of place.
He stands at just under 200 centimetres tall.
“I hope to grow another few centimetres over the next few years to make me more versatile as a basketballer,” he said. “If I do, I can play in any position.”
Impey has been a regular fixture in regional and Victorian representative teams, but he takes nothing for granted.
He missed five months of basketball in 2018 and 2019 due to a fractured tibia. It took another six months for him to regain his full strength.
COVID stopped the 2020 season and impacted 2021.
When basketball fully returned, Impey had moved up to under-18s, where he impressed immediately.
“I was selected in the Victorian Country team,” he said. “We finished the carnival in sixth place.”
Impey has been part of Basketball Victoria’s National Pathway Program for two years until he recently graduated this year.
Players selected for this program are seen as having the ability to represent Australia.
However, that doesn’t come without additional commitments.
“We trained twice a week in the program and once a month to MSAC [Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre] for a full day of training with the high performance coaches,” he said.
Add this training load to Impey’s regular Tuesday and Thursday training in Ballarat and games rostered on Fridays and Saturdays there isn’t much time left for school and social commitments.
The Brookfield resident attends the Maribyrnong Sports Academy on a scholarship.
Impey has already made an impact in the leadership space.
In 2020-21 he won the “Back In Motion Leadership Award” at the academy and in 2021 he won the high-performance coaching award. Again in 2021 he won a Victorian school sports award for his outstanding achievements in basketball.
Impey said the last couple of years had made him realise how much he loves basketball.
“It increased my love for the game and made me very appreciative of the opportunities that have come my way,” he said.
Impey this week represented Victoria in the School Sport Australia under-18 national basketball Championships in Bendigo.
Impey is this month’s Don Deeble sports award nominee.
The Don Deeble Sports Star Award is sponsored by the Yarraville Club Cricket Club,
Strathmore Community Bank, the Deer Park Club, Ascot Vale Sports and Trophies and the
Star Weekly Newspapers.
If you would like to nominate a monthly winner or attend a dinner at the Medway Golf Club, contact, swrsportsclub@gmail.com or 0408 556 631.
