Basketball school ready to groom youngsters

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 22

Basketball school ready to groom youngsters

PA Hamilton The New Zealand Basketball Institute, the country’s first full-time sports training facility, will begin work at Hamilton this week with the arrival of the first draft of young basketballers.

Fourteen of New Zealand’s most promising women basketballers between the ages of 17 and 21 have been selected from nominations to form the Inaugural training squad.

Run by the Hamilton Y.M.C.A. on behalf of the New Zealand Basketball Federation, the institute is headed by the national women’s coach, James Logan. Last year’s North Shore ' women’s coach, Mark Haldane, is his assistant.

Training squad members will live and work or study at Hamilton while undertaking a two-year programme at the institute, although amongst the initial group, about five or six of the older members will only stay for one year to help launch the programme.

Logan, New Zealand’s Basketball Coach of the Year in 1985, came up with the proposal for the institute last year after returning with the New Zealand women’s team from a world championship qualifying series defeat by Australia.

“Our main aim is to develop a pool of fundamentally sound players in this country for our national team to draw on something we don’t have at the moment,” he said yesterday. Many of the ideas for the institute are based on the basketball set-up at the successful Australian Institute of Sport, which the New Zealand team visited at Canberra last year. The first training squad member has already arrived at the institute. She is the I.BBm Canterbury centre forward, Sonja Akkerman, aged 20, a former New Zealand junior representative. Ten more players will arrive at the institute this week-end, and the remaining three will arrive during the next seven

weeks. “They were chosen from quite a big pool of nominations, based mainly on their record with the juniors,” Logan said. "We were familiar with most, but did have to rely on the word of other coaches and federation files for some of them. “We were quite surprised at the enthusiastic response, especially from the players. A lot of associations still don’t understand the concept as a national thing rather than a Hamilton thing.” The majority of the players taking part have played in the national league and represented New Zealand at junior level.

“They are here because they want to improve their own skills and standards and it is a lot easier to do that in a group situation with the facilities and coaching staff all available,” said Haldane. Next week will be spent settling players into jobs and accommodation, making fitness assessments of

each individual and general initiation. The programme will then get under way with three or four team practices (two-hour work-outs) a week, individual skill practice sessions (1% hours) two mornings a week, and 1 hour workouts two mornings and two evenings a week after individual fitness and strengthening programmes. . Build-up games are expected to start in midMarch, and will lead up to the women’s national league in which the institute team will be a fullyfledged competitor. Those taking part in the institute’s inaugural programme are: Flora Tahana (Porirua), Vicki Beardsley (Southland), Julie Rowan (Wanganui), Maria Street (Papakura), Tracy Molloy (North Shore), Justine Mitchell (North Shore), Debbie Hinton (Otago), lone Guillonta (Wellington), Margaret Costain (Canterbury), Linda Exeter (Napier), Sonja Akkerman (Canterbury), Kareen Mackey (New Plymouth), Sheryl George (New Plymouth), Lynley Hannen (Hamilton).