STEVE and Julie Bruce might be known for having raised two sons who have played professional basketball, but the pair also had promising junior sport careers themselves.
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As a junior, Julie achieved her best sporting results in swimming, while Steve was more than a handy tennis player.
Growing up in Birchip, Julie said sport was always a big part of her life.
“From a small town sport was all we did. If you weren’t in the pool in the summer, you’d be playing cricket. You’d play netball and football and it was just what we did,” she said.
Julie swam at state levels and also at a national championships when she was in her early teens. At one point, she tried out for the Commonwealth Games.
“I was a swimmer as a junior up until it got pretty serious during school. It was pretty hard to keep going with the level I was at,” Julie said.
“I’d be going to school with wet hair for as long as I could remember. If there was a competition coming up, someone would pick me up from school and take me to the pool at lunch time and I’d be back there at night.
“I got to a state level and then tried out for the Commonwealth Games but missed out.”
Training in Birchip in a 33-metre long pool brought challenges that most city competitors didn’t have to deal with.
“I was about 13 or 14 then. I loved swimming but it became too hard,” Julie said.
“We used to swim in a 33-metre cold pool at Birchip and would have to travel to Melbourne. We didn’t have a fair dinkum coach, it was just the mums and then a coach would come from Bendigo every now and then. It was pretty basic stuff and I did well because my cousin and I who were the same age really pushed each other.”
Sport played a similarly important role for Steve Bruce growing up, but for him it was all about tennis and table tennis.
“My parents were right into tennis and it was a big sport for the family,” he said.
“My mother has the distinction of having beaten Margaret Court back when she was 14 years old and she was still Margaret Smith – that was in an Albury Easter tournament.”
Steve progressed through the regional divisions and competed at a state level for tennis and table tennis.
“I won country tennis regional singles titles, doubles and mixed titles too and I played at state level and won a doubles title,” he said.
“I played in tournaments around the Wimmera and I was runner-up in a singles in Nhill one day and earned myself a couple hundred bucks. Playing on grass courts my style was pretty much always serve and volley.”
Steve played alongside Murtoa table tennis export Glenn Tepper, who went on to play internationally.
“I played table tennis with Glenn Tepper, who was at one point the national coach of Sweden,” he said.
“He and I won a western Victorian doubles title when we were 14 or 15. Glenn was a really good player and he played internationally.
“We were young and there was a group of us from Horsham who made a Victorian team to play in championships in Adelaide. There were about 40 girls and 40 boys who were selected and we caught a train over to Adelaide and stayed in a motel and competed for a week.”
After high school, Steve became a teacher and his first job was at Birchip where he met Julie.
The pair’s sons Aaron and Shaun went onto play professional basketball, while their other son Cam is currently the coach of the Horsham Hornets.
Julie said watching Aaron and Shaun progress through a number of basketball pathways as juniors was a surreal process.
“It was really surreal – Aaron was first and we weren’t sure what was happening,” she said.
“We were just guided by those try-out days and it just rolled along. Horsham is pretty big on the basketball map now but back then it wasn’t huge.
“They sort of broke the ice and Horsham kids have to do the hard yards. We travelled down to Melbourne with Aaron for four or five years on a weekly basis. We did the same thing for Shaun but Cam wasn’t as interested in doing that but he is doing really well locally.”
After the boys joined the Horsham Amateur Basketball Association, Steve tried his hand out at coaching.
“When we came back to Horsham I was teaching with Owen Hughan at Horsham High School and the Hornets were just starting out,” he said.
“Owen and I played in one season just before the Hornets started and then Owen coached the Hornets and I volunteered as a team manager.
“The basketball coaching came after I saw other people coaching and I thought I could do better. After the boys started I took a step back because as a P.E. teacher I was doing enough. But then I got involved and was coaching them at basketball.”
Steve said the family had formed life long friends from regular trips down the Western Highway for basketball.
“It was a long journey – we started off being involved with squad basketball and then the squads go around to different towns,” he said.
“You meet a lot of different people and if your children are good enough they get selected for regional and state teams. You always meet different groups. We have contacts all around Australia, people we can call on and visit and sit down and have a beer with.
“We originally took Aaron down to primary school try-outs and we had no idea how he would go. There was one boy who was above six feet in grade six. You go away to things like that and you see some physical freaks.”
Aaron went onto to play for Baylor University in the United States, a time Julie said was tough for herself.
“It was horrible for me – I just hated the fact he was so far away in such a foreign place,” she said.
“He couldn’t get enough of it so I figured if he was happy then I should be happy for him. All the trips to Melbourne certainly paid off and Aaron never let an opportunity pass him by.”
Steve and Julie visited Aaron on a number of occasions in America – Steve said there were plenty of fond memories from their times abroad.
“We probably visited Aaron four times when he was at college and it was like a whole different world,” he said.
“The university was like a town in itself. Because Aaron was highly recruited, when we went there Shaun and Cam had the passcodes to get into the stadium, which seated 8,000 people.
“They would get bored and go from the accommodation down to the stadium, put the lights on and shoot around.”
After plenty of years being involved in sport, as junior competitors themselves and then on the long journey of junior pathways for their sons, Julie and Steve said they were proud of what they had been able to achieve.
Steve said: “All three boys have done very well with their sports. They have followed the directions they all wanted to.”
