Long-serving Southland administrator to concentrate on role with Sharks

Long-serving Southland Basketball general manager Jill Bolger will narrow her focus in the new year to the Southland Sharks.

The veteran administrator was made a life member of the association at its annual meeting last month following a lifetime of service to the sport.

She will blow the fulltime whistle on her role with Southland Basketball this week and move across to solely focus on her role with the Southland Sharks.

Southland Basketball chairman Brian McKenzie said it was the perfect time to acknowledge her incredible contribution to the sport in the South.

"Jill has been a driving force for the sport in Southland," McKenzie said.

"She is the epitome of everything that is great about the game of basketball. She has been the face and the voice for the sport for 40 years and during that time her drive, passion and amazing work ethic have taken our association from something of a back-water into one that is held in the highest regard around the country."

Bolger received a Basketball New Zealand long-service award earlier in the year.

"You never do anything with a view that you are going to stick around long enough to get a life membership, but it’s really nice to be recognised," she said.

"To be able to look back and say I’ve actually contributed a bit is great, and it’s also really nice to be a member of a select club which is really active in the basketball community, which includes my two sisters (Lynne and Carole) which is really special as well."

It was the family connection that got Bolger started in the sport in 1983.

Lynne mentioned they needed someone to "do a few hours in the old ticket office".

That role expanded to administration.

"I was only in that role maybe a year and a bit and then next thing you know, I’m on the committee and a couple of years later I’m chair," she said.

Stadium Southland is a far cry from the humble surroundings Bolger started in 40 years ago.

"We had this old building that was falling to bits...people would come and play and there would be road cones on the court and people would run around them because there were holes in the floor.

"We had a wonderful club stalwart in Waitangi Osbourne, who passed away a few years ago, who would be out there fixing holes and players would be running around him."

Bolger had two stints as SBA’s committee then board chairwoman. The first was for over six years, then she returned to the role not long after for another 10-year stint, which ended only when she started as Southland Basketball’s general manager in 2010.

"The first third of my time with basketball was fun and games and hilarity and things were a whole lot more social.

"The middle third was keeping things going, growing as much as we could and was business as usual, but this last third, the last 13 or 14 years has been off the rails in terms of what we’ve been able to achieve

"That is with the Sharks and now how we are seeing the women’s game starting to come good, but it is also just the incredible growth generally in the sport and moving into the stadium was a really big part of that.

"It hasn’t always been easy. We’ve had a pandemic and a building collapse, but we’ve got through because of the right people with the right attitude.

"That can-do attitude that we always talk about is alive and well in basketball and I don’t see any reason why that would change."