In April 1950, a group of Lithuanian men decided to register a team in the Perth Amateur Basketball League. It was a windy, stormy day when a Lithuanian man, tired and running later rushed to register the team. Exchanging small talk with the Registrar it inevitably turned to the topic of weather. After a short while the Registrar asked for the team name and without a thought, he uttered Storm. Lithuanians referred to the team as the similar sounding word, Šturmas, which translates to ‘attack or assault’. The all Lithuanian team made an impressive impression from the first game.
The Captain and Coach of the team, Stasys Gincauskas began playing basketball in 1937. Now aged 28, he had played extensively all over Europe. He was a member of a Lithuanian team formed in Germany after the war which toured France. As a schoolboy he was coached by Leonas Baltrunas, who invited him to Victoria to play basketball there.
The other members of the team comprised of Kazys Anaitis,
Vladas Marcinkevicius, Leonas Šilinskas , Henrikas Naglazas, Kazimieras Balkauskas,
Vytautas Klimaitis, Juozas Sakevičius, Vytautas Kalinauskas.
Storm won the A grade premiership in 1951 by a point from
the all-Latvian team Patria but lost narrowly to the same club in the
1952 season's grand final. The Estonians
also formed a team, Kalev and the three teams brought basketball to a new
level.
The 1951 Western Australian basketball team consisted of
Gincauskas, Klimaitis, Anaitis and five Latvian players from the Patria team.
By 1952, Storm was out of the top four, the players moving
from Perth after completing their two-year work contracts.
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