Mr Ward - who worked for the Mail-Times from 2008 to 2010 - said he was "honoured and humbled" to receive the 2021 Basketball Victoria Media Award.

"It is lovely and I always take an award from Basketball Victoria as a great honour because I played basketball as a junior. Not near as well as anyone I write stories about," Mr Ward said.

"I always took great honour in what Basketball Victoria do and the impact that them and their clubs have on all the people who play."

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Basketball has always been a great love of Mr Ward, which was evident during his time in the Wimmera.

He covered the Horsham Hornets on a regular basis and won two Big V Basketball League awards for his coverage of the side's Big V Division 3 championship winning side in 2008.

Mr Ward paid tribute to the basketball-related opportunities he received in the early stages of his career.

"I wanted to make a point of saying thank you to the places such as Whittlesea Pacers where I played my juniors in Melbourne's north and the Horsham Hornets who were so good to me when I was in Horsham," he said.

"That is something I do take great pride in, having those connections to those clubs and later on as time's gone on having a chance to cover NBL and NBA, the highest levels of the game.

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"It's lovely to be acknowledged from somewhere where I started."

Although basketball is his greatest love, Mr Ward enjoys writing about a multitude of other sports at the Age - including rugby league, rugby union and AFL.

He also has started to cover news in the last couple of years, something which he said the Mail-Times prepared him nicely for.

"I've gotta say the thing that made me chuckle a bit when I spoke to some of my former colleagues is it's funny how things turn full circle," he said.

"When I was in Horsham we would do the sports section and then help out with news later in the day. And I actually spent my last ten months or so at the Mail-Times working in news, just because I wanted to change up and learn some different skills.

When the pandemic hit with the Age I realised there wasn't going to be much sport on for the next period so I actually said 'would you like me to work on the live blog we were doing for COVID?'

"And suddenly all my news training came back. And since then I do one or two shifts a week in our news department."

Mr Ward is the second consecutive former Mail-Times journalist to win the Basketball Victoria Media Award, after Megan Hustwaite was crowned the 2020 winner last year.

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