Following-on from our recent membership survey, we wanted to provide some feedback and share the next steps in our return to the court.
Firstly, we’d like to say thank you to everyone who took a few minutes to complete the survey – we had almost 40 responses to the survey which represents a quite significant number of our members.
Returning to the Floor:
From a review of the survey, it’s clear that there’s a real desire to get back on the floor and playing at the earliest opportunity, with the majority of respondents ready to return to the floor “immediately” and 95% of those surveyed ready to return to the floor before June.
Based on the current governmental guidance, and timelines from Basketball England, the first sessions we can consider would be during April, with the Senior sides looking to return to the floor from May.
Whilst we appreciate that some people would be willing to undertake outdoor training, or training within six person bubbles, however, we’ve found that the English weather can cause havoc with the former, and training in six person bubbles simply isn’t economically viable.
Traditionally, this time of year is approaching the start of the off-season for us, and with competitions not scheduled to start until Autumn 2021, it’s important that we take a reasoned and measured approach to our return to the floor. That starts with considering our approach for the 2021/22 season.
We will look to agree training times and days with our venues, and will communicate the schedule out shortly. Through the off-season, all sessions will be “pay as you go”, with a fee to be confirmed shortly.
Junior Training/Competition Age Groups:
The Coronavirus pandemic brought a number of financial challenges to us as a club. We’ve lost out on over a year of fundraising, paid to participate in competitions that didn’t happen and incurred training costs during pre-season – for a season which didn’t happen.
As a sports club, a number of our seasonal expenses are front-loaded, which has meant that we’re not in as strong a position financially as we were before the pandemic, and over the past couple of years we’ve seen the birth of the Norfolk Youth Basketball League and have seen other local basketball options being discussed, too.
In light of this, we intend to take a sabbatical from Junior National League Basketball for the 2021/22 season, whilst we consolidate our Junior Programme. We will review our membership, competition options and performance during the 2021/22 season, and consider returning to the National League after this time.
As such, we intend to run the following Junior Training Sessions/Age Groups for the coming season:
- U12 Mixed
- U15 Boys
- U14/U16 #AllGirls
- U18 Men
We will shortly announce the coaching line-ups for each of these groups. In the meantime, the club’s coaches will coach across our Junior Teams.
Summer Camp, #IWill & Volunteering:
The response to the suggestion of our Summer Camp returning was extremely positive, with the overwhelming majority of players surveyed stating that they were definitely looking to attend the camp.
Summer Camp:
We are currentlyworking towards a summer camp towards the end of August, as well as a Day Camp for ages 7-14 in the June half-term. Arron is scheduled to lead both camps, and is discussing with other coaches (both at the club and further afield) to establish who will be available to support.
We will have information regarding both camps very soon.
Our #IWill Junior Leadership programme has already received a good number of applicants, and during the survey received an average score of over 80% in respect of candidate interest.
If your child is aged 14-19 (or will be in September), this programme is open to them to apply to – but places are limited! Please contact us to confirm your interest in participating.
Volunteering:
Over one-third of the parents who were surveyed expressed an interest in volunteering at the club in some capacity. However, quite a few of those parents didn’t provide an email address to follow-up. If you could please get back in touch with us if you can spare any time at all to support what we do, we’d really appreciate it! For everyone who provided an email, a member of the Management Committee will be in touch in due course.
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