For 15 years, the Summer Slam basketball tournament has attracted some of the most talented young athletes from across Australia.

As a junior, South Sudanese Australian NBA player Thon Maker came from Perth to play. So did current NBL players Deng Deng and Majok Majok.

But, on Tuesday, organisers said they had been forced to cancel the competition. In a statement, they said continued media coverage about “African gangs” had made it too difficult to find a venue in Melbourne.

“We never really had any problems until all this in Melbourne about youth doing certain things,” Emmanuel Acouth, co-founder of participating club the Savannah Pride, told Guardian Australia. “Unfortunately we are paying the consequences of their actions … They are just a minority in our group. They don’t represent us.”

After more than a year of debate over what federal government ministers have called Melbourne’s “African gangs crisis”, the cancellation of the Summer Slam tournament is the latest blow to Australia’s South Sudanese, community leaders say.

South Sudanese Australian lawyer Maker Mayek says the cancellation of the Summer Slam basketball tournament ‘boggles the mind’. Photograph: Maker Mayek

“People talk about integration all the time but, when you get such a high-profile tournament, one that has such sentimental value to the community, cancelled, it boggles the mind,” said Maker Mayek, a South Sudanese-Australian lawyer. “It brings the South Sudanese together. There is no event as important as this.”

In recent years, the tournament has faced negative publicity. In December last year, an Airbnb property was trashed in Melbourne’s western suburbs at a house party organised by people who had attended that year’s Summer Slam. It prompted the local mayor to say the event would not be held at the same Werribee stadium due to complaints from residents. The 2015 event was marred by a brawl in the carpark of the Frankston basketball stadium, which left a man with stab wounds.

In July, as former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull cited concern about “Sudanese gangs” in Melbourne, another basketball tournament, the National Classic, did not go ahead.

Organisers had been reluctant to criticise venues then but, on Tuesday, they finally spoke out.

“Stadium managers are afraid to host our event because of the African gang stories they see in the news,” the South Sudanese Australian National Basketball Association said in a statement. “Some of our partner organisations have also had concerns towards our event because of the fear that has been created.

“The actions of a few teenagers in the community are being unfairly used to stereotype the vast majority that are doing the right thing.”

Andrew Gaze, the Australian basketball legend and current Sydney Kings coach, said the stance taken by stadiums appeared to be “highly prejudicial”.

He was hopeful “common sense will prevail” and the tournament would go ahead.

“From what I’ve been told the problem they have is getting access to a venue due to stereotypes or prejudiced type views on what might happen and the dangers of hosting a tournament,” Gaze, who coaches two South Sudanese Australians, Deng Deng and Deng Acouth, told Guardian Australia. “[That] sounds extraordinary and almost hard to believe.”

On Wednesday, the Bendigo stadium offered to host the event. The general manager of sport, Ben Harvey, told the Bendigo Advertiser he would be open to discussions about hosting the tournaments at the venue.

Stadium managers are afraid to host our event because of the African gang stories they see in the news. South Sudanese Australian National Basketball Association

For the players, the cancellation was devastating, said Acouth, who trains players between the ages of 12 and 20 in Blacktown, Sydney. “When they heard the news, they couldn’t understand how someone else’s actions could ruin something [when they had] nothing to do with [it].

“They [the stadiums] are doing an injustice to our sporting country. These kids are the future of Australian basketball.”

In a statement, Basketball Victoria said venues had placed restrictions on the event that were “scarcely demanded for other Victorian basketball tournaments and rarely required throughout the entirety of the sporting community”.

That included notifying surrounding residents about the event, paying for bus-in, bus-out transport for all participants and only having games played during the day, with a half-day grand final.

Karen Pearce, an official at Basketball Victoria, said a venue had been secured but the association chose to cancel the event.

“I think there were a few stipulations that were put in place by local councils – that we had to do and would have got done – but I think, in the end, it was just going to be a little too hard,” Pearce told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

Andrew Gaze, pictured coaching the Sydney Kings, says he hopes ‘common sense will prevail’ and the Summer Slam basketball tournament goes ahead. Photograph: Craig Golding/AAP

Jenny McMahon, the acting chief executive of Wyndham council, which hosted the Summer Slam in 2017, said it had not been formally approached to hold the competition. McMahon said the organisers, the council and venue had “determined” that the event had outgrown Eagle stadium in Werribee.

John Kuot, a former Summer Slam player who is on Victoria police’s African community taskforce, said most of the trouble had happened after the tournament itself had finished.

“As a community we have an obligation to ensure each and every person has the chance to reach their potential.”

The South Sudanese Australian National Basketball Association was contacted for comment.

Acouth said while many young South Sudanese Australian players had hopes to make it overseas, including his own nephew, who was currently playing US college basketball, the tournament represented “more than sport”.

“I can talk for myself. I’ve been involved from a young age and it showed me the direction to do. I had no time to do all kinds of antisocial things because I was involved in basketball.”