KEN FINCH

5 feet 10 inch (180cm) Guard

1956 Olympic Games

Growing up in Camperdown Sydney after the Second World War was a pretty tough environment as a lot of families were underprivileged and children could get into trouble. The Sydney Council provided a Park Playground at Camperdown in an effort to provide youngsters with activities to improve their physical activity and hopefully to “keep them out of trouble.” They also provided a paid supervisor to help the kids and to manage the equipment for the younger ones, a park with cricket pitches, a soccer field, paddle tennis courts and basketball courts. While their motives were to provide physical activities to occupy the children, the Council was unaware at the time that as well as imbuing kids with a love of sport out of this park would also come a number of Australian representative athletes in a number of sports such as soccer, basketball, rugby league and cricket. One of these youngsters to become an Australian representative basketball player was Ken Finch. Kenneth Roy Finch was born June 9th 1936 in Camperdown, Sydney NSW. He commenced playing basketball at fourteen years of age when he played juniors with future fellow Olympian Bruce Flick for Camperdown Playground in the City of Sydney competition. In 1951 he joined Newtown Police Boys Basketball Club with Bruce Flick and Merv Moy (another future 1956 Olympian) and was coached by the future 1956 Olympic Assistant Coach Harry Burgess, who Ken credits with much of his early success. In 1954 the Police Boy’s Team became the “Paratels” one of the first sponsored teams in basketball. The team won the NSW under 16, under 18 and senior NSW’s titles. Ken represented and captained NSW at the first Australian Under 18 Championships held in Launceston in 1954 when NSW won the title.