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July 1, 2022

Q & A with Former Boomers & ISCA Head Basketball Coach, Rob Beveridge

Ian Evans

Rob has an impressive history of coaching and mentoring basketball players, representing Australia throughout his career. He has been involved in the Australian national team program for fifteen years and has coached at two Olympic games, three World Championships, and has spent the past ten years coaching in the NBL and the WNBL. We sat down with Rob to talk more about his coaching career.

What is the highlight of your sporting career?
After being involved with coaching in High-Performance Sport for close to 30 years, I have been very fortunate with what I do and have several memorable moments. Probably what standouts the most would be winning the World U19 Championship in 2003 with an incredible group of young men.

What is your advice to students balancing their studies and playing sport?
One thing that I have certainly learned from a lifetime of working in sports is you MUST have a “Plan B”. With being an athlete or coach, you only have a certain amount of time in the sport before you either retire because of age, injury or your time is simply up. It is imperative that while being an athlete/coach you need to engage in other curricular activities such as studying as well as learning to network and build relationships with as many people as you can for when your sporting career is over. In addition, you need to find your passion and pursue it with vigour.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
I love my job as a coach for a number of reasons. I love to compete, I love the challenge, I love the heat of battle, I love the adrenalin rush when the lights come on when you are on the “big stage”. But what I love most about coaching is the relationship you build and the positive influence you can have on your athletes on and off the court to help them become the best version of themselves.

How do you work on becoming a better coach?
For me to become the best coach that I could be, I surround myself with great people and rely on mentors! Coaching is a bit like “plagiarism”. Find out what the great coaches do and “copy” what they do. This needs to be done by identifying who are the great skill development coaches, which coaches are great tacticians etc., but I have found that the most successful coaches are authentic and servant leaders who care for their athletes.

Who is your inspiration?
My inspiration has and always be my mother! As a single mother, she raised and nurtured 3 kids and worked 2 jobs to make ends meet and to ensure we never missed out. The sacrifices and commitment that she made to look out for her kids and grandkids (and still does) inspire me every day.

What motivates you?
One of my biggest motivations is the “naysayers”! There are so many negative people in the world that prefer to put you down so this motivates me to want to prove them wrong.