North Shore Basketball
Giving everyone a shot
The fact that North Harbour Basketball has the largest membership of any regional basketball association in New Zealand is no accident.
Members of the U20 Women’s basketball team take a breather.
The association has run a dynamic campaign and its community coaching programme is the largest in the country.
Every primary, intermediate and secondary school in its zone participates in the February to December leagues and North Harbour Basketball makes up close to a third of the total membership of basketball in the entire country.
More than 7,500 members play in North Shore competitions – 81% are school-age and 19% are adults. Many more receive coaching at schools, so the total participation is about 9,000. The target is to have a basketball champion in every school.
The association runs competitions for over 600 teams; enters over 20 representative teams in all zonal and national competitions; supports large referee, score bench and venue controller education and recruitment schemes that cover the whole of North Harbour.
Last year, in direct response to our new strategic plan for sport and recreation, the Association applied for
community coaching programme funding – a regional initiative with wide-reaching impact.
Part of our new strategy is to support projects that get more youngsters into sport and recreation, so we granted the project $40,000 toward programme development and participation.
North Harbour Basketball now provides in-school coaching, holiday camps, representative coaching and subsidies so volunteer coaches who enter school teams in the schools programme get training to improve their skills.