Five years ago, local Loxton filmmaker John deCaux was tasked with making a five-minute reel for the Loxton Amateur Basketball Association’s 70^th anniversary dinner. Fascinated by the club history, it turned into a 45-minute-long documentary.

Loxton Basketball: 70 Years is now set to join SBS on Demand from May 14. Released in 2021 and then picked up globally on Amazon Prime, the documentary has found a home back in Australia.

“This is such a uniquely Australian story,” said deCaux, “Two blokes saw a picture of basketball in a magazine and thought ‘Why don’t we give that a go?’”

It all began in 1949 when Loxton locals Merv Bartsch and Esmond Sior flipped through an American sports magazine. Intrigued, they slapped together an idea of the game, making up the rules as they went. The following year, a West Adelaide basketball club heard about them and sent through an official rule book for them to use.

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Over 70 years after the club founders first popped a plywood board up behind a netball goalpost, the club now fields a range of programs for Junior and Senior players across roughly 45 teams.

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Instead of delivering decades of grand final highlights, deCaux realised he had a classic three-act narrative. “There was that initial first getting off the ground, and then kind of the ’70s, ’80s, where the club started falling off. And then obviously the last part was the resurgence during the ’90s and basketball came back into the mainstream.”

He ended up applying for additional funding to expand the project, coincidentally on the day of the 2021 Loxton SuperCats Grand Final. Coached by Les Lange, Loxton clinched the win in true cinematic fashion, now captured forever in the documentary.

A club member for 47 years now, Lange started coaching when he was 17 and has a strong, heartfelt pride in the win – it was also a nephew of his who took the winning shot. He spoke to CityMag/InDaily about his experiences making the documentary.

“My favourite part was probably listening to more of the older generation, of what they used to do… they’re just so invaluable, because unfortunately, once they’ve gone, those stories are gone, aren’t they?”

He hopes other sports teams across the country will be inspired to research and archive their own histories, saying, “What John did? You know, we’re forever grateful that he came up and did that and spent hours and hours and hours on it.”

“And I would advise any other sporting club, doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s hockey, doesn’t matter. Look, jump on board for your history, and you get to learn some stuff as well.”

Speaking about Lange, John deCaux says, “A lot of the time when I make a doc, you have that one person as an anchor. It’s kind of the story set-up person. Les was that person because he’s been so ingrained his whole life in the club, and he lives and breathes basketball.”

“I’ve very little interest in basketball, so to feel engaged, to spend a year of my life making a documentary about it says a lot about Loxton and the community that it is, and the support it gives – that people give each other.”

deCaux says the community reaction to the documentary has been wonderful and surprised even club members who had no idea about its origins. He says the global reaction was fantastic as well, especially in the United States, where American pride helped it find an audience.

“I think them seeing their one of their national sports get played in another country, and so passionately, I think, was really engaging for them.”

Mostly, he’s proud about having been able to immortalise an important piece of local sporting history and keep it safe for future generations to learn.