25th August 1928 – 24th October 2019
A valued member of the Basketball fraternity Ken Harvey passed away peacefully on the 24th October.
Ken seems to have been part of the State’s basketball scene ever since the Association was formed. As a player with the YMCA since 1944, he has toured widely with the club playing in the rain at Forbes, in the snow at Orange, while bush fires raged at Lithgow and been seen chasing a basketball onto Parramatta Road to prevent it going under a tram.
A lifetime of interest in the YMCA basketball club and subsequently with the City of Sydney Association, his work has been organisational and for years he was the man in the club and association depended upon to keep the wheels turning. Ken has coached and refereed at all levels of the game, local, state and national and with considerable success.
Ken never drove a car after his Ford prefect and from then on travelled by Bus and Train. Ken was always on the run using public transport and it never stopped amazing everyone that Ken would be on the move all the time. Every Christmas Ken would arrive at the Basketball NSW office with his trusty trolley and deliver a Christmas Cake and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. On the 8th December 1997, Ken was working with a school disability program and he had left home early one morning, however, on returning home Ken was accidentally shot getting off the bus close to his home. Apparently, a couple of youngsters had found a loaded gun that their father hadn’t hidden, and since he was outside tending his drug crop, they thought they might fire the weapon out the window. Poor Ken, he happened to be in the way. Seven hours of operating and then the same again a month later saw Ken on the way to recovery. He started back coaching in April and was back playing and refereeing before the end of the year. Everything was back to normal, that is, refereeing twice a week, being club Secretary, coaching and playing.
Ken also accompanied the NSW Police basketball team to numerous national games as their referee where he was active in the event.
Ken has been Registrar of BNSW, Assistance Secretary of the Sydney Basketball Council, Junior of the Sydney and State Referees Associations and a delegate for many years to State Council Meetings.
Ken Harvey was awarded Life Membership of Basketball in 1998 and was inducted into the Basketball NSW Hall of Fame in 2013 as a Contributor, Ken was also a Life Member of the City of Sydney Basketball Association.
The Ken Harvey Trophy is awarded annually to the Champions of the Under 18 Division One Men’s and Women’s Metropolitan Competition.
Ken Harvey will be missed dearly by all those who were touched by his kindness and willingness to assist with whatever activity was being conducted but he will always be remembered as the “LEGEND IN THE CITY”
Thanks, Tom Moore for writing this vale on behalf of Basketball NSW.