Perhaps the proudest legacy that Chris McCoy is destined to leave is basketball's legitimate claim to being Tasmania's most functional sport. In governance, organisation, participation and national involvement, basketball is the envy of many rival sports in the state. McCoy - who this week announced his resignation after nearly nine years as Basketball Tasmania chief executive - has overseen progress in all those areas. Unlike so many other Tasmanian sports, basketball has recognised and embraced the state's unique geography. Hailing from Devonport, McCoy needed no reminding that the North-West has long been the island's basketball hotbed. Acknowledging this, state championships were held at a centralised venue - Launceston's Elphin Sports Centre - thereby treating not only players from Hobart and Burnie alike but also Dover and Smithton. And you only had to drive down Racecourse Crescent to see how phenomenally popular they were. Even with the combined total of spaces afforded by Elphin SC and the NTCA Ground car parks, the nearby K-Mart complex often served as an unwitting overflow. Three well-organised regional championships in primary and high school ages produced qualifiers for state titles which were always as structured as the teams competing. Justifying its treatment as equals, the North-West often responded with dominance as countless state school titles headed back up the Bass Highway and, just last week, three of the four grand finalists in the State League (which was the brainchild of McCoy) hailed from that region with Penguin ultimately claiming both men's and women's titles. Pathway is the overused buzzword of choice for many sports but basketball has shown it in action. Several of the state's best have made it to the highest level with the likes of Launceston-born quartet Hollie Grima, Adam Gibson, Chris Goulding and Lucas Walker achieving success at world championship, Olympic and Commonwealth Games levels. Hobart's Hugh Greenwood was on a trajectory to emulate them before being one of many lured away by the more lucrative incentives - within Australia at least - of the football codes. From Russell Robertson to Ben Brown, AFL's gain has so often been basketball's loss. Greenwood was also among the veritable conveyor belt of Tasmanian basketballers invited to hone their craft and complete their education free of charge in the uncompromising environment of the US college system. Kai Woodfall, Callum Barker, Kyle Clark, Taylor Mole, Reyne Smith, Sharn Hayward, Aishah Anis and Tanner Krebs - to name but a few - trod a similar path and just last week the Tarran to Tre Armstrong brotherly combo nurtured with Wynyard in the NWBU was inflicting similar destruction for the California Baptist team in the Western Athletic Conference. Another generation, headlined by Launceston dynamo Sejr Deans, is destined to follow the same Air Jordan footsteps. McCoy's tenure also witnessed the unthinkable - a Tasmanian team joining a national league. Thanks primarily to the desire and drive of NBL owner Larry Kestelman, a Tassie franchise has been warmly welcomed into the competition. The JackJumpers' invitation, creation and now participation has been a massive contrast to the lack of national willing and doomed efforts in Tassie's other three major participation sports - football, soccer and netball. Announcing his departure at Basketball Tasmania's annual dinner, McCoy said his only real regret had been failing to secure quality venues in the state. Venues exist in all three regions, but are mostly outdated and in dire need of either investment or replacement. Substantial government investment in the Derwent Entertainment Centre - demanded by the wily Kestelman as an essential ingredient in the JackJumpers deal - has shown what is possible with the venue looking magnificent for the team's official christening in the pre-season NBL Blitz competition last week. Similar investment and commitment would be required either to transform the Silverdome or provide a viable alternative as proposed at Inveresk. Reflecting on the beginning of his tenure, McCoy said: "We were virtually bankrupt as the state body, we had two and a half staff as professionals in the sport and now we've got a healthy balance sheet and over 30 full-time professionals between us and the JackJumpers and associations." Basketball participation has seen a 55 per cent growth during McCoy's reign while Tasmanians make up 10 per cent of national squads with only 2 per cent of the population. His term has not been without controversy, notably Basketball Tasmania's rift with the Tasmanian Institute of Sport which led to the end of the latter's hugely-successful high-performance program headed up by knowledgeable and astute operators like David Munns and Justin Schueller. And there was a high-profile spat with David Bartlett over funding streams which led to the former Tasmanian Premier advising parents to tell their kids that "it was the Basketball Tasmania grinch that killed Rex the Rhino". Whoever was ultimately to blame for the tragic fate of the Hobart Chargers' mascot, McCoy can genuinely claim to leave Tasmanian basketball much healthier than he found it - surely the desired legacy of any sporting administrator.
