Club Statement - Chris Clark - SDBA Committee Member

15 Sep by Belinda Vivian

Summer Season 2024 planning is well underway. Our dedicated team of Volunteers have been working collectively behind the scenes since early July to pull it all together.

As we have seen over previous years, demand for basketball in Strathalbyn has continued to surge. Once again, this season we experienced high demand across almost all grades. As a result of this demand and the limited court space available, we regrettably had to close our Expressions of Interests earlier than expected, creating a player wait list across all grades.

It is particularly disappointing to have had to place a number of under 10s on a wait list.

Due to our limited court space (only 1 court), we are unable to provide adequate time slots at appropriate times of the day to fulfill the player demand. Our training opportunities are also very limited.

Regrettably, many will miss out on an opportunity to play this Summer Season. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to play, to say no, is incredibly difficult and truly saddens us that we even have to!

We are very aware our club is a community club in a growing community experiencing growth and demand, daily. Our volunteers face difficult decisions as we work with what we have, as efficiently as we can. We continue to raise the issue of court and facility availability with the local council and politicians as it really is unacceptable for a growing community like ours. We would also encourage you if you’re out and about to raise the issue with our decisions makers. It’s the only way we will get this issue addressed.

We continue to work on solutions to provide a brighter, more sustainable future for the club and its facilities for the future of basketball in Strathalbyn and Surrounding communities. These solutions are taking much longer than we had hoped but know we are doing all we can to try and increase facilities in our local area as it really is unacceptable to have to tell people they can not play local sport.

We thank you for your understanding and commit to doing all we can to give as many people as we can the opportunity to take part in basketball in Strathalbyn.