Hi,
Firstly, I’d like to thank you, the players, volunteers, players parents and the referees and officials for committing to an amazing weekend of basketball in Manchester.
We had 23 games over the weekend culminating in ten finals, producing some of the closest (and noisiest!) games we’ve seen for some time. There was also feedback about how the standard of play is getting better which is really encouraging. Both locations had a great following from fans, combined with great venues to produce a brilliant atmosphere for competitive junior basketball.
It really was a weekend to celebrate the great game and showcase all our emerging talent!
Our Events team worked tirelessly at the weekend to make the finals the best they could be for all involved, on and off the court. If you have any feedback for us to consider to improve the finals or input from your own experience at the weekend, please email your response HERE and we will build this into our planning for next year.
In addition to thanking you for your time and support for basketball, I thought you would be interested in a number of key developments that Basketball England are looking to shape and develop in conjunction with the basketball community in the next nine months to achieve better things for the sport.
We’ll soon be announcing some adjustments to our National Leagues for the 2016/17 season based on a lot of feedback from clubs about improving the way the leagues operate. We are also committed to undertaking a much bigger review of leagues and competitions over the next 12 months so we have leagues and competitions that:
• work better for players, clubs, coaches and parents
• help to attract more people into the game
• strengthen our talent development
• provides a better balance between competition and development.
Basketball England have led the ‘Future of Basketball’ consultation and we have almost 1,000 responses across 20 topics to digest and build these views into our decision making. One immediate consideration from the feedback is the lack of awareness and understand of our player/talent partway. This will be reviewed in some detail this year so there will be more to highlight in this subject over the coming months. We’ll be sharing the overall survey findings after the analysis in the summer.
As the Governing Body, Basketball England is an integral part of the newly formed British Basketball Federation (BBF – the recognised British body by FIBA to produce representative teams at GB level) and we have facilitated the development of a joined up Britain wide strategy for Basketball. This will be launched soon and will be helpful in providing a direction for the game and help unify the many organisations in basketball.
I am very keen to improve Basketball England’s understanding of player, coach, club, referee and officials needs, and the opportunities for more and better schools basketball. During the summer I will be writing to all customers of Basketball England and giving everyone the opportunity to identify their current and future needs. This will help the sport enormously as we can create better plans based on your feedback to deliver services and new development opportunities that should help you and help us increase participation and grow the sport. It will also help develop more and better talent and help to grow the infrastructure of facilities and people to drive basketball forward. A planned approach will also give us a better chance of attracting more resources for the sport.
I will be communicating more of this as it unfolds this summer. There’s a very bright future for basketball. If we can bottle the energy, talent and inspiration we saw at the weekend and move forward together, Basketball will be in a much stronger position to reach more people and be more ambitious with our emerging talent.
I appreciate everything you have done in the sport over the past season and congratulations for being a part of the Playoff Finals weekend. Please pass this email on to your players, coaches and the people who helped you with this achievement, we actively encourage their valuable feedback as well.
Regards
Stewart
Stewart Kellett
CEO Basketball England