The Mount Druitt club behind South Sudan’s Olympic stars

Diing Deng’s face lights up when he’s asked about South Sudan’s first Olympic basketball appearance.

The 15-year-old’s family home in western Sydney was the place to be when the East African country’s national side, which played its first international game seven years ago, took to the court in Paris. His mother, born in South Sudan, welcomed anyone wanting to catch the action into their house during the Olympics.

News of the viewing parties quickly spread across the South Sudanese community. Enthusiasm and passion were the only conditions of entry.

“You’ll see a Sudanese uncle, at Blacktown or Mount Druitt, and they would ask ‘Are you watching the game?’ and I would say, ‘Yeah, and I’m bringing the energy too’,” Deng said.

“It was big for everyone … all ages, all genders tuned in. That was a big thing.”

Deng doesn’t want to be watching from home when the next Olympics are held in 2028. He wants to be in Los Angeles, playing for the country of his mother’s birth, 13,000 kilometres from where he first picked up a basketball.

It might seem like a far-flung ambition, but Deng has precedent on his side. He’s one of the 150 players with the Savannah Pride, a Mount Druitt club that has quickly become a factory for producing top basketball talent.

Thirty-five Savannah Pride players have gone on to play professionally, at US colleges, or for NSW and Australian national teams since the club was founded by Mayor Chagai in 2006.

Among them is Bul Kuol, a Sydney Kings player who represented South Sudan in Paris. Duop Reath – who featured in his second Olympics for the Boomers this year – is the first Pride player to make the NBA, after signing with the Portland Trail Blazers last year.

Chagai was a talented player himself. He was fielding scholarship offers from US colleges and European academies when he badly broke his arm during a game in Kenya in 2005, ending his career.

He arrived in Blacktown one year later, 17 years after fleeing his village in South Sudan as a six-year-old, following stops in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Egypt.

“My main aspiration is to showcase the potential of South Sudan to Australia and show to South Sudan what Australia has offered us as a country,” Chagai said.

“To be able to have a contribution that not only benefits my country of birth but also both countries … is something that makes me very proud.”

The stories of South Sudan’s players in Paris strike a chord with those in Chagai’s gym.

Carlik Jones, the team’s leading points scorer in Paris, was born in the US but naturalised through his mother’s South Sudanese heritage. Kuol, Sunday Dech, Jackson Makoi and Majok Deng were among the Australian-raised players who represented South Sudan. Others came from Canada, the US, and other parts of Africa.

South Sudan’s Olympic campaign ended with defeats to the US and Serbia – eventual gold and bronze medallists, respectively – after an opening match victory against Puerto Rico.

Chagai, who watched each game with his players, remembers how he cheered during the Puerto Rico game. His mother is still in South Sudan, while his wife Adol and two boys, aged four and six, live in an apartment in Nairobi, Kenya while they await clearance to join Chagai in Australia.

“For [South Sudan] to be at the Olympics with a contribution from the players that learned from Australia, came from Australia, [they now] can really take Australian knowledge back home to show to their parents and relatives,” Chagai said.

“We came as refugees because of war, [now we] have something that shows them how beautiful the world is.”

Rilpuou Dut, a Pride player who stands at 205 centimetres at age 15, was inspired by the performance.

“It made me feel motivated seeing a country like us that’s getting noticed on the global stage, and people can recognise it as a great country,” Dut said. “No matter where you come from, you can always dream big.”

Sydney Kings coach Brian Goorjian travels to Mount Druitt each fortnight to put the Pride’s best players, including Dut, through their paces.

Goorjian, who coached the Boomers in Paris, “got emotional” when South Sudan qualified for the tournament.

Dut reckons it’s “pretty crazy” that a team like the Kings is taking notice of the Pride, but Goorjian knows all too well the promise that lies within the Mount Druitt PCYC. It’s him, after all, that watches over Kuol at the Kings and gave Reath his Olympic debut.

“It makes me feel better [being there] than they feel about me being there,” Goorjian said.

“I took my wife there, I’m taking my daughter there. It’s really, really special.”