Growth curve for basketball

The Hibiscus Coast Basketball Association expects to see a 50 percent increase in player numbers from last year, once the selection of this years’ representative teams is complete.

About 110 players have already trialed for seven of this years’ rep teams, with another 40 players expected to trial for possibly another four teams.

Coast has already announced senior rep teams for U15 Boys (two teams), U15 Girls, U17 Boys (two teams), U17 Girls and U19 Boys and practices are underway at Stanmore Bay Leisure Centre, Whangaparaoa College, and Dairy Flat Primary School. Trials are still to take place for the expected three U13 junior teams and the senior U23 men’s team.

Coast teams will start competing against other associations when the 6-8 week Supercity basketball competition, administered by Harbour Basketball, begins in mid-March. With the final schedule still to be confirmed, most rounds are expected to be at the North Shore Events Centre, but each of the six Northern Zone basketball associations involved will have the opportunity to host one round of the competition.

At the end of the Supercity competition, the top 10 placed teams in each age group go through to the Auckland regional qualifiers, and then the top five teams from those qualifiers go through to the national age group tournament. Last year, both the U15 Coast boys and the U15 Coast girls made it to the nationals.

Coast also plans to send representative teams to the four-day Mel Young Easter Basketball Classic tournament, held in Mt Maunganui.

As an indicator of the growing popularity of local basketball, Coast committee member and U15 boys coach Dan Bungard has also noticed a few players coming up from the North Shore to trial.

“In the past, we’d have 10-12 players per age-group turn up to trial, and we’d accept them all. Now we have around 30 players per age group turn up to trial, and this allows us to select 2-3 teams per age group,” Dan says.

For those players not involved in the Coast rep team setup, there are other competitive, and social basketball opportunities at schools, local clubs – including Rise Up Basketball – and Stanmore Bay Leisure Centre.

Despite all this growth, there are plans to further increase participation numbers by offering in-schools programmes, that teach Basketball NZ’s “National Style of Play” including new drills and concepts that Basketball NZ wants to implement at the grassroots and representative levels.