Westleigh Basketball Club – A Dream Team

Everyone at Westleigh Basketball Club truly believes that basketball is a sport for all. That’s why they’re working to make that a reality for the people of Wigan – with a little help from runningsports along the way. Celebrating their 10th Anniversary this year, and with 100 members aged between 4 and 46, the club is currently trying to encourage more girls to participate in this exciting fast moving sport, and has plans to cater for disabled players by offering wheelchair basketball too.

“Everyone that comes through our doors we’ll try to engage in some aspect of basketball”, says Sharon Seaton, the club’s Head Coach, “whether that’s as a player, coach, referee or in another voluntary capacity.” With basketball being quite expensive in terms of hiring venues to train and play matches, the club relies heavily on volunteers helping out so that they can continue to run their nine teams. There are 11 coaches qualified at different levels, and in return for their time the club finds them paid employment with the local sports development team or in schools. And in addition to the volunteer workforce that make up their committee, there are eight table officials, four Level 2 referees and 20 Level 1 referees, with another 14 people due to take their qualification soon. Add to this all the parents who help out with transport and catering on match days and you soon reach a total of about 70 people giving up their time to run the club.

Athough the club has only been going for 10 years, they have already achieved Clubmark accreditation; Sport England’s cross-sport scheme that demonstrates that a club is of high quality and provides a safe, welcoming environment for young people. Whilst working towards Clubmark, Sharon attended the runningsports workshop A Club for All, which shows clubs how to promote themselves and successfully recruit more members. Sharon said that the workshop was a great help, “because it confirmed that some of the things we were doing were absolutely the right things to do, for example our determination to provide the same opportunities for the girls as for the boys. It is harder to attract girls but we are working on ways of getting the message across to them that basketball is a fun sport to play, and something that you can do with your friends.”

The workshop also gave Sharon some useful pointers to help with the club’s development of referees and coaches. All the players are mentored to develop their coaching and refereeing skills if they show an interest in doing so. The club believes this can help when applying for jobs, as they will be up against hundreds of other young people with the same qualifications, and volunteering experience can make all the difference. For example, when one of the young volunteers, who devotes around 15 hours a week to the club, applied to a local university, he was told that he would be accepted on his volunteering background alone.

Since attending the A Club for All workshop, membership has grown from 70 to 100. However the club hasn’t stopped there. To try and attract new members from all sections of the local community (as the runningsports A Club for All workshop advocates) the club is now running weekly turn up and play sessions so that young people aged 4 – 18 can try out the sport, and also so that older people, who perhaps have not played since they were at school, can rediscover basketball and hopefully start playing again on a regular basis. The wheelchair basketball plans are also being put into action, with suitably qualified coaches available and fundraising about to start in order to purchase height adjustable posts and wheelchairs. Sharon is again turning to runningsports and has booked one of her colleagues onto the Funding for Your Club workshop, which takes delegates through various ways of raising money, as well as giving tips on how to make a successful funding application.

“The runningsports workshop basically gave us the encouragement to continue to develop our membership in new ways rather than standing still, and more importantly the knowhow to put our plans into practice”, concludes Sharon. “I would recommend them to all clubs – they’re only three hours long, and yet you can pick up so many useful tips. I am sure Funding for your Club will prove to be just as beneficial for us.”

If you’re involved with a club that needs to know more about maximising funds, increasing its membership, applying for a grant or recruiting and keeping volunteers, Sharon has proved that it really is possible to make substantial changes with relative ease when you’ve got runningsports behind you.