Hawks Hero Hoping to Impact Community in Retirement

The Illawarra Hawks farewelled one of their favourite sons in Round 18, as 37-year-old guard/forward Tim Coenraad walked onto the court for the final time in his long and storied association with the club.

Coenraad, who retires with 374 games for the Hawks, began his career with the club in 2009 and has remained there ever since. He falls into the category of remaning a one-club player for his entire career - a category that is becoming rarer and rarer in the modern landscape of professional sport.

After initially calling time on his career in 2020, he returned as an injury replacement player for Cam Bairstow at the back end of NBL21 to add another 64 games to his tally.

He finishes with the third most games ever played for the foundation club – behind only Mat Campbell and Glen Saville – but Coenraad says his impact on the community is far more important to him.

“The way I’ll measure myself going out isn’t by any kind of record or games played, it’s about how many lives I’ve changed for the better,” Coenraad told the Illawarra Hawks website.

“There’s not much loyalty in sport anymore, but the loyalty I have is for the community. It’s for the faces that have been in the crowd since I was a rookie, it’s for the kids I’ve seen grow up in the stand, it’s the feeling I get when I’m the loudest cheer when I come out of the tunnel – I hear that, and I thank you for it.

“Hopefully I can do enough to make you guys just as proud of me as I am of you, because the community means everything to me.

“You go and see other towns and cities but none of those other places hold a candle to the Illawarra, just the atmosphere, the vibe around here, the people in particular, the community, it’s just a place I wanted to stay and whenever it came contract time I always thought about that.

“Making a positive change in people’s lives is the greatest thing anyone can ever do, so I’m going to try and do that moving forward.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">To kick off our MVP awards night we’d like to recognise all our milestone men! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HawkNation?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#HawkNation</a> <a href="https://t.co/dJ2s0nrINg">pic.twitter.com/dJ2s0nrINg</a></p>&mdash; Illawarra Hawks Basketball (@illawarrahawks) <a href="https://twitter.com/illawarrahawks/status/1623966660309958658?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Coenraad, who originally hails from Brisbane, almost never got his initial opportunity at NBL level.

After being rejected by a pair of teams in his home state, it was only through sheer force of will that he earned an opportunity with the Hawks, and even then, the organisation wasn’t initially convinced at the prospect of bringing him on board.

“I was not sought after; I was not heavily recruited. I went to a tryout for Gold Coast, and they didn’t have spot, they only had a development player spot so I didn’t get that. I had a call from Cairns, and they pretty much told me they didn’t think I was ready to play NBL, no other team reached out,” he reflected.

“I had to pretty much beg Illawarra to let me come down because at the time they were looking for a shooting guard and that’s not where they thought I’d fit the mould. Most of my career has been about as long as I’m able to get in front of people, show them my work ethic and show them what I can do, usually good things have happened.

“One of the things I felt I was really proud of is whenever someone wasn’t into me or didn’t want me as much, as soon as I got in front of them, I changed their minds.

“I always wanted to play professional basketball from the time I started playing basketball. I didn’t think, honestly, it would last this long. Fourteen years is a lot longer than the average career.”