John Taylor has had a long and productive association with the Perth Basketball Association for over thirty years.
John first played basketball in one of the church competitions in the late 1960s and began playing with Perth in the 1970s. One such team was in the C Grade Men’s competition, captained and coached by the late Len Vlahov. That team won the grand final. During the early eighties, John played in the Perth Redbacks Division 1 team.
John has always volunteered his services to the club and has been a valued coach and administrator for nearly every year since he joined the club. As well as being a coach of State underage teams he has coached several of our junior girls and boys teams as well as our senior teams in his long association with the club.
In 1998 he was awarded a Medal of Honour for his meritorious service to the Perth Basketball Association.
John has also been the coach of our Division 1 men’s team and the assistant coach and coach of our SBL men’s team. He was assistant coach to Norm Majors in 1997 when the SBL Men’s team won the SBL championship and again in 1998 and 1999 he assisted in the coaching of our SBL team especially in the difficult year of 1999 when we had a change of coach, but our men still managed to make it to the Grand Final. He has been the Junior Boy’s coordinator and in more recent years has been the WABL director and a member of the Board of directors of the PBA. He has coached numerous teams both boys and girls from U/14 through to U/18 and seniors and as well as one of our U/16 girls’ teams while juggling the demands of a very busy engineering business.
During John’s involvement in basketball, the game has experienced highs and lows in Western Australia. However, during that time John Taylor has maintained his loyalty and commitment to our Club and given both our younger players and our senior players the opportunity to participate in our great game.
John Taylor was awarded Life Memberships of the Perth Redbacks in 2006.