Spawning out of Melbourne’s West, charity basketball tournament Shooters Shoot has been honing in on their “hooping for a cause” ethos, by leveraging the power of sport to break down stigmas surrounding mental health. The tournament hosted its first event in 2021, which welcomed hundreds of hoopers, families and fans of the game from all walks of life. They managed to raise $16,000 from the event, and donated 100% of the ticket proceeds to Foundation House, a refugee trauma agency dedicated to supporting those who have experienced torture and traumatic events.
However, the tournament’s efforts didn’t stop there. The founder of Shooters Shoot, Sagalee Omer, wanted to continue the fight for mental health awareness by using the proceeds from the tournament to feed back into local grassroots community initiatives, specifically targeting youth and young people. Throughout 2022, the Shooters Shoot team has been working with various figures and groups from the local scene such as Notorious Customs, the FairDinkum Podcast, Talking Trophies, The Bittersweet Podcast and more to showcase the different ways we can approach mental health and wellbeing. They’re also gearing up to host their second ever charity basketball event, set to take place on November 20.
Complex AU sat down with Sagalee to chat about the Shooters Shoot inception story, what they’ve been doing for local schools in the region, and what’s next for this impressive initiative.
So far, the efforts and achievements of the Shooters Shoot team are truly commendable. What were some of the inspirations behind starting the tournament?
So I didn’t just wake up one day and decide I wanted to make an event to raise money for the community. I was turning 23, and I wanted to do something creative for my 23rd birthday. It was my Jordan year—I love basketball—and I thought about running a small tournament and paying for a court for 4 hours in my local area, and then inviting some of the guys to play basketball, and hiring a couple of DJs and photographers.
Then I thought, maybe I could make it like $5 per person, and give it to Beyond Blue or some organisation that focuses on mental health—because my mum’s a mental health clinician and she’s been teaching about mental health since I was a kid. She’s always told me that I should do something for my friends or people I know that [brings awareness] to mental health—so it was a blessing to do that through basketball.
After I had the idea, none of the courts I wanted to book were replying to me, [until] I found a lowkey one that I didn’t think would reply, but somehow did. A couple days later I was able to book it, and after I booked it I thought, “I need to make something really good out of this.”
After that I got people I’m close to and people I trust to help me out, and within one month we were able to create some promo and do what we did—raise $16,000 for mental health. We had the media attend, and it was an amazing day that wasn’t just about basketball. There were so many things that came out of it. We were fresh out of 2021’s lockdown and so people got to reconnect, we had Soli Tesema perform, and photographers got to photograph the event and showcase their skills too.
That’s really amazing. So, you donated the money to Foundation House. What made you choose them?
When we pitched it to Foundation House we said look, we’re really serious about this, and we want to be involved in figuring out how the money will be handled, and what we can do with the money. That really caught their attention, and the CEO came on the day, and ended up donating $10,000.
Ever since then we’ve had a strong partnership with them, they’re honestly like family to us. They really take care of us and this whole year, the money we raised has been going into campaigns, as well as sitting down with professionals and talking about [mental health] on podcasts that are run by people in our community. We’re able to reinvest into our community ecosystem, and for us that’s a plus plus plus.
Everything you’ve mentioned so far showcases how Shooters Shoot is so much more than just a tournament. What are some of the activities you guys have been running this year?
One of the things we got to do with the campaign theme was show people the different ways they can fill their emotional cup. So, for example, there’s Notorious Customs who makes custom shoes, which fills her cup. We had Vola who cooks, which fills her cup. We had Josh who does photography, and that fills his cup. We had Sumaya, a painter, and painting fills her cup. All these people were expressing in their videos how different things filled their cup. The idea of filling one’s cup goes back to what Shooters Shoot believes—that you don’t always have to talk about mental health to help yourself. Sometimes it’s just about getting active, and it doesn’t have to be about literally doing physical activity, but it can be ‘physically’ drawing, ‘physically’ creating—it can be anything.
With the money, we’ve also been able to run school programs all year. We run 3-4 week programs where we do basketball activities with the kids, and then include questions and activities that get them thinking about their mental wellbeing. We targeted year 9s, because we believe that’s the most crucial age for identity. At the end [of the program] we give them a Shooters Shoot package, which is a Shooters Shoot backpack, creative pamphlet, and journal. We’re well on the way to giving these to almost 500 kids. It’s a big blessing, what we’ve managed to do this year with $16,000.
When we talk about mental health—especially in multicultural communities—it’s often easily dismissed, and at times, discussing one’s mental health is perceived as a weakness. However, amongst younger generations this seems to be shifting, and is also a testament to the benefit of initiatives like Shooters Shoot. In saying that, how have you navigated bringing up these types of conversations, especially with a multicultural audience?
So our technique last year was to promote the event as a basketball charity event—the messaging was centred around encouraging families and parents to bring their kids to the event. When we brought everyone in, we really wanted to have different ages there.
Before the event occurred, I wanted to make sure we spoke about mental health so that, you know, a mother could be like ‘ah okay I see what this is, and I see what’s going on’. I also wanted to make sure that my siblings and people my age could also be like, ‘yeah this is empowering for us’, because we’re in the same demographic and this is what we need to speak about. I wanted younger people to hear that too, and they might not have caught on to the message straight away, but at least they were starting to hear it spoken about. If we’d just said, ‘hey come to the event, we’re going to talk about mental health’, people wouldn’t have come.
So, that’s our way of doing things. We understand that it’s not just sitting down and talking about mental health that works. Something I’ve learned in so many different ways is when you look at someone and they feel seen, that’s healing to them.
What are your future plans for Shooters Shoot and what can we expect next?
To keep it simple, I look forward to continuing this momentum and fostering the community we’ve established. I just want to keep doing this thing for the community we’ve established, where we can be like ‘hey Shooters Shoot is happening next week, pull up’. I want us to enjoy the hell out of the day, take something from it and go home feeling reconnected and re-engaged. I think the biggest message I want to push is that we need something like this. It’s really important that we come together and talk about this stuff.
You can support Shooters Shoot by purchasing a ticket to their upcoming tournament here. All proceeds will be going towards supporting their community.
