Afroman
Years ago
Losing kids to other sports
Sturt U14 boys last year had a very sucessful season.
They won the Classics, Norwood Easter carnival, State Champs, Summer & Winter season, and finished 3rd in the Nationals.
3 of the starting 5 have left basketball, mainly to play footy.
For the Sturt bashers, this is good news, but for basketball in SA, this is very bad news.
I am sure that this is not only happening to Sturt, but to many other clubs as well.
Having read HoopSA for a while, there does not seem to be an easy fix answer to the solution.
Basketball does not hold much of a future for the majority of upcoming players. Football has a system in place that looks after the up and coming footballers.
Admittedly, if you make it very big in basketball, it far outweighs anything football can offer, but realistically, how many make it very big in basketball.
In SA, you can count them on your one hand.
I think the Football set up has 2 major advantages over the current setup with basketball:
Namely, Football does not go on all year round, giving the players a break from the pressure of a tough season.
Basketball just rolls from one season to another with not too many breaks
Secondly, there are far more places available for talented young sportsman in the SANFL & AFL.
This we cannot change
For basketball to grow in SA, we need to keep all the talented sportsman playing our game.
Burnout is a big factor involved in Boys changing over to other sports or just stopping at all.
All the relevant parties need to get together and work on this issue, and not be selfish, and each trying to get the most out of the boys, without taking the boys long term interest into consideration.
Anyone who does not have anything constructive to add to this discussion, please refrain from writing anything.