Stanley Dargis

Stan Dargis migrated to Australia from Lithuania in the 1950s. He played basketball for the Varpas team in our Victorian state championships which led to his selection in the 1956 Australian Olympic Team. Not long after the Olympics he moved to the United States and took up residency in Chicago where there was also a strong Lithuanian community.

The 1956 Olympics provided a great opportunity to expose the still fairly unknown game of basketball to a larger Australian audience. Although the Boomers finished 12th, defeating only Thailand and Singapore, basketball officials in Australia used the Olympics to widely promote the game.