Photo: Pastor Graham Nelson, Principal Mrs Sally Broadley and Mr Tony Smith, MP cutting the ribbon to officially open Oxley Stadium.

On Friday 12th of October 2008, Oxley College held the official opening of their new state of the art sports stadium – Oxley Stadium. The stadium was opened by Mr Tony Smith, Federal Member for Casey and Shadow Minister for Education.

“Featuring 5 competition sized basketball courts, a fully equipped fitness centre, a 300 seat function room, change rooms to accommodate 120, class rooms and a sports café, Oxley stadium is a fantastic new facility for the school and also the wider community,” said school Principal, Mrs Sally Broadley.

“This is a great, great example of a school and a school community taking hold of its own destiny,” said Tony Smith.  The stadium was built without any funding from external sources.

During the design and construction of this new facility a lot of thought was given to environmental impact and cost savings through recycling, reduced power consumption and water savings.

The exterior shell of the stadium, a recycled factory building, purchased from Arlec on the opposite side of Maroondah Highway, not only saved the school money on design and engineering but also minimized the need for expensive new building materials.

The lighting system, designed especially for the stadium provides 50% power savings through intelligent daylight harvesting and carefully calculated skylight paneling that provides the maximum amount of natural light while reducing the maximum amount heat from sunlight.  Oxley Stadium is the first fully commissioned facility of its kind in Australia.

General lighting throughout the stadium is automatic, with sensors turning lights on and off.

Oxley appreciates the need to capture and reuse it’s valuable water resources.  The water from the large catchment area of the stadium roof is distributed to a newly built retarding basin, which provides year round watering for the Colleges vast grounds and sports ovals.

Amongst these environment friendly measures is other technology that makes this stadium state of the art.  The flooring used for the court floors is the same used by the
Australian Institute of Sport.  The floor provides anti shock resistance, providing players with 41% shock reduction.

The stadium is now used as a training base for the Saints and Hawks basketball teams and hosts Monday and Wednesday night and Saturday competition as part of the Kilsyth Basketball Association network.