New Life Member – At the Sherbrooke Basketball 2022 Annual General Meeting held Thursday 24^th November Mick Spruhan was awarded a Life Membership.  A life member “shall be restricted to those whose service to basketball and the Association has been worthy of the highest honour”

Mick started playing basketball nearly 50 years ago in 1973 then moved into a coaching role in the nineties when his children decided to play.  They went to a clinic down at Tecoma Primary and signed up with the Tecoma Raptors.  Eventually Tecoma Raptors joined with St. Thomas Mores Spartans and Belgrave Bandits to form the Mountain Tigers. Mick said if they wanted to merge, he would only be a part of the club if they played at Sherbrooke rather than Knox. Mick kept 8 teams to stay at Sherbrooke the rest went to Knox.

As Mick’s children became more actively involved in Rep basketball, so did Mick and his commitment to Sherbrooke. Originally Sherbrooke’s rep side were the Kings, then the Spiders and then the SUNS we know today.   Mick has coached many junior rep teams over the years as well as domestic teams.

To this day, nearly 50 years later, with new hardware in his knee, Mick and The Bandits still take to the court on a Wednesday night.

Mick has been a player, coach and member of the Board of Management of Sherbrooke Basketball since 1999, he has been president since 2001, somehow managing to be renominated every year for the last 21 years.  This has not been a position taken lightly by Mick by any means.  We have finally achieved  the goal of having management rights to our stadium, thanks to Mick’s perseverance.

He is passionate about locals having local opportunities to play the sport.  He has a layback approach (albeit sometimes annoying for the rest of us) to securing support and participation.  He has successfully pursued sponsorship for many years from local people and local businesses.  He promotes inclusiveness at all levels.  He is completely devoted to Sherbrooke as a community based organisation.

Many presidents are sitting in “ivory towers’ but Mick is the president on the ground, ever present.  He currently heads up the Saturday morning rookies’ clinics and has come out of “retirement” to coach a junior rep U16 team.

Mick has already served a life sentence for Sherbrooke Basketball so the Board thought it appropriate that he be awarded the honour of a life membership to further cement his involvement moving forward.

Thank you Mick