The initial plan is to Scrap the Under 20/21 program and play the Youth league -YL- (under 23) on Tuesday nights, thus moving reserves to Mondays.
The thought process is with large amounts of players moving to the YL the Division 3 players will move up to Reserves and Div 4 to Div 3 and so on...

Here are some of the points from the 'Competitions Committee' in all their wisdom!

• The removal of the Under 20/21 competitions
• Scheduling all Under 23 divisions on Tuesday night
• Moving the Men's and Women’s Division 2 competitions from Tuesday night to Monday night, and opening them up to multiple teams from all clubs currently participating in the Basketball SA junior and senior district competitions
• Scheduling the Men’s and Women’s Division 3, 4 and 5 competitions on Wednesday night

Eligibility for the Under 23 competitions will be restricted to players aged Under 23, i.e. no overage players will be allowed
• For the purpose of a player’s ability to play in multiple divisions, the Under 23 competition will be treated as a standalone competition, meaning that players will be able to play in any combination of the Senior (including CABL), Under 23 and Junior competitions in any given week, but will not be able to play in multiple divisions of any of these three competitions (other than the existing by-law which
allows Central ABL starters to play in the division 2 senior competition the following week)

The purpose of the Youth League is:
• To bridge the gap between the Junior State League and the Central ABL, for elite
players aged 17-22 who are either not yet involved in the Central ABL, or who do
not receive significant court time. The competition currently lacks a true
development league whose main purpose is to provide an effective pathway from
juniors to Central ABL, and division 1 of the Youth League would serve this
purpose.
• To assist with player retention in this age bracket in all divisions. There is a high
dropout rate in the 17-22 age bracket, and is believed that a multiple division
Under 23 competition providing an appropriate level of competition for all players
would encourage players to stay in the sport.

Like it or not, I am a not BTW, it looks like we will be having the YL next year at some point, I wonder how many ABL coaches are going to allow players to miss trainings to compete in this exercise!
I think and have for a while this is just a ploy to discourage younger players from playing ABL and beyond and I believe it will push players from the sport!

Agree anon,

But all the players who are good enough to progress are already good enough to play ABA. Because ABA is such a poor standard.

So essentially, we will be catering for people who aren't there, and creating a competition which is 25% not as good.

Plus we will see 25% of our senior players move out of the sport and not retain them as coaches because they will be pissed of at getting shoved out the door.

Wont work till clubs sort it out.Give it to Basketball Adelaide to run.They may get a sponsor to help out
BSA just shifting one problem to another problem.

Players are leaving now because the Under 20's is crap, so what changes?
Last week one club had 5 players in Reserves and 6 players in U20's.How will this help them ?

Comp committee have a lot to answer for, hence while they are involved, the sport still goes backwards.
Go and look at cancellations/Forfeits/Withdrawls over the past 2 years to 5 years ago!

If Under 23 moves to Tuesday and Div3 becomes Div2 on Monday's, will teams get to play any games at their home stadium to feel that they are playing for a club or are they just playing for BSA as revenue raisers at other stadiums.

In every other sport , in the "Home and Away season" you get to play "Home and Away" but not if this goes forward.Some clubs dont play under 20's at their home court because a whole heap of "out of shape" people run around and grow the coffers of BSA but not th e sport.

IF you are part of a "club" , and you dont play at your home court, how will they attract people to score, team manage or even coach or volunteers around your club?What happens to the people who want to help out at ABA?

Some clubs struggle now to get people, this will only drive more away from the sport.

Wake up BSA !!

end of the day BSA is trying to squeeze another $9.50 a game out of everyone- and in this case the young adults - mostly students.
All this so they can justify the large amounts of employees at BSA that contribute very little.

How about finding a sponsor for the grades / leagues we already have and lower the cost to play and watch, instead of again squeezing players for the costs involved for all the crazy plans BSA can dream up.

who are the wise owls on the competitions commitee
can we have names - or are they anon faces

think time to send clear messages to thos stuffing up the game done great job totally stuffing under 20 dysfunctional at best not happy
so when do ABA clubs now train =- any ideas

wed / thursday ???
totally disillusioned with basketball mates pulled pinned earlier because of under 20 - look at state champs - no team to play for thanks
BSA for great final year experience in basketball gone thanks for memories
LOST ME

im a 29 y.o. trying to make an ABA team for next season after hanging up my footy boots. Im worried that I wont even be looked at as an ABA coach now must monitor 2 teams of potential players. As far as trainings go instead of the ABA and reserves squad you now have 3 teams training at once, making it even harder to be noticed.

If this YL goes through I may just scrap the whole idea and just play social for fun.

Might be a foot in the door for those that aren't at SASI or get noticed for State. And there are plenty of good kids out there that havent been given those opportunities

Works pretty well for Big V, QABL, SEABL.

There is a provision in the YL that you can have up to 3 overage players that are either just missing out on the senior team or there to provide experience and direction.

Senior Team Policy and Guidelines
-------------------------------------
Where a club has both a senior team playing in Big V Championship, Big V Division One or SEABL; and a youth league team in Big V, the following applies:

? The club must name seven players who must play the entire season in the senior team and are not free to move between the senior team and the youth league team. (the seven may be changed during the season based on form, injury or other mishap upon application to the league)

? Those seven players must be considered to be the best seven players at that club.

? The remaining players who form part of the senior team squad are able to move between the senior team and the youth league team for the club.


Youth League Team Policy and Guidelines
----------------------------------------
The league decided not to impose strict age limit rules on youth league in 2006 but it has established strong guidelines and provided the League Office with significant power to review performance against those guidelines and impose corrective requirements mid-season if required:

? Players in the team must be 23 or under at the conclusion of the last game of the season, with the exception of three (3) players who may participate in any one game whose age shall not be limited.

? More than three (3) players over the age of 23 may be registered with the team, but only three (3) may play in any one game.

? The League Office has the right to intervene where it believes the spirit of these guidelines is not being respected and impose restrictions, and will do so in conjunction with the relevant team.


This is taken from the Big V bylaws - if they go down this track it could make it more attractive


Full Doc: http://linky.com.au/rprxb

Well I like it. The biggest change is to combine the current Under 20 Div 1 and Div 2 Men's comps together and rename other existing comps and keep them on the same nights.

The three points of contention are overage players in YL Division 1 (allow 2 oveagers maybe?), the night for Div 2 men (maybe move it to Wed night?) and where lower Division Under 18 players go. Maybe keep Under 20 Div 2 for this purpose?

As far as coaches go, you actually need one less coach as there is one less comp.

There is a much clearer pathway to ABL and it combines two half competitions (Under 20 D1 and D2 men into a single much better competition).

I think it's immeasurably better than what we have at the moment IMHO.

The biggest mistake seems to be not making it clear cut as to which is the ABL feeder/development comp. ABL teams need somewhere to develop their fringe players (some of which may not be under 23). It is ridiculous to expect them to do this via two teams (plus the problem of finding an training slot early in the week).

I don't think the over age rule would fix it - some teams have quite a few reserves players who are over 23. I think ABL teams will be forced to make Reserves (Monday night) their ABL development squad and train on Tuesday night (preventing the best U23 players from playing in the U23 comp).

If the U23 comp is intended to get the best available plaers involved then this is a fail. If they are not worried about the best players being involved then the move away from Friday night and the increased age limit might be an improvement on the existing comp.

The problem with people in this State is they like change it took along time for SA footy to change to an u/16 and anu/18 comp to match other states and now basa want to make an u/23 comp no one likes the idea now wonder all the other states say we are backward its time to move forward and get on with it
PS if you dont like it dont play!

845, you are right and that's why it is a much better system. Currently 2 teams (Under 20 Div 1 and Div 2 men/women) feed into the ABL. This way there is only one team (Youth League Division 1) which does this. Div 2 men/women is just the current div 3 men/women rebadged. Just allow 2 overage players in YL D1 and you are pretty close to a good situation that solves many current and past problems. It's not perfect but it's much better than the current farce.

The most important way to retain players in this age group is by promoting stability in team composition. Team mates should train together, and be allowed to play and develop as a team. Apart from winning, team development is the greatest reward.

If the YL helps to create team stability, good.

But if the YL will encourage coaches to shuffle players between teams on a weekly basis, while they train in different compositions, there will be no team development, no team spirit and players will keep on dropping out.
My fear is that the latter will happen

There are never going to be more players in ABL, so to create a "league of hopefulls" and advertise it as a pathway to ABL seems a red herring.

Agree Trton 52,

But just about anything would be better than the current situation. Problem is that we all agree its flawed in some manner, and people will go for it because it is better.

But if we agree to this flawed concept now, we wont get a better one until the problems in the current one have put the sport in a whole.

If we say no to this one, we have a change of getting something better.

Where kids cant drive themselves, who work, are at uni or are at school dont have to do 6pm games midweek.

Something that is home and away.

Where we dont lose 20% of a competition and think its a better competition.

Where up and coming players get to play and learn from veterans.

etc.
etc.
etc.

Agreed Juno. The concept proposed is better than the staus quo. It replaces 2 comps (one bad, the other OK) with one good competition that feeds into ABL. If there was no possibility of further negotiation, that would a step forward and should be agreed upon with a view to getting further changes in at a later stage. If there was to be some further negotiation then negotiate the following:

1. Adding 2 older age players to Youth League Division 1.
2. Discuss the pros and cons of Senior Div 2 (the old Div 3) staying on Monday night or moving to Wed night.
3. Add a bridging comp Under 20 junior comp for players coming out of lower division Under 18's on a Friday night.

Don't throw out the baby with the bath water and scrap the whole Youth League proposal as there is some if not a lot of merit to it. It undoes a lot of the damage of having mutually exclusive Div 2 and Under 20 competitions on the same night which has been a disaster.

Interesting topics here but I question if the clubs are smart enough to make the decisions to make this work...

The only example I can see in making the current system work is Norwood Women, they have both their reserves and Under 21 teams at the top of the ladder have about 5 players that are set in each team then there is about 10 floating players bouncing between the 2 teams to fill numbers. They are going to qualify the floaters in both reserves and Under 21s and have a good crack at both championships.
I believe they have approached the leagues with the spirit that BSA had in mind when they came up with the idea of D2 and U21s on the same night.
If others clubs cant make this work how is it going to help a club like norwood their 5 set reserves players are too old to play YL and the 5 set 21s arent good enough to play reserves. The 10 floaters now have to make up the numbers and 1/2 of them will have to miss ABL training once a week.
I dont think you will find clubs that have to make the decision as to which night these players play will take a league (1 of the 2) seriously. either YL or reserves will suffer unless the clubs decide to pursue 1 league as a feeder and the other becomes almost social.

Filthy Mexican,

There in lies the problem. Most clubs do not have sufficient numbers to do that. If BSA had consulted rather than pushed it dow peoples throats they might have seen the issues they were creating. Now anumber of players have left the sport and we are in a worse position to get it back up and running.

Would Centrals and Eastern even have a youth eam without over age players?

Trton 52,

If we have learnt anything about BSA, it is their lack of consultancy. The clubs will respond and they will do what they think is right (no U23 players and no U20 competition.) and it will all go to shit. And we will be stuck with it because to admit they have made an error, will show that they have no idea. Which they wont do.

But then you have 2 comps without all the best players in it. So if you put good players inot U20 div 1 they win easy. And if you put them in div 2 they win easy. SO they both become lopsided comps.

These players will play twice because they have to train as well. Train Monday, Play Tuesday, Train Wednesday or Thursday, Play Saturday. Same as they do now.

No, 2 games without other people is what BSA wants.

What we want is for the U23 league to have some older age players to lift the standard. With a div 2 and U20 competition to cater for the next tier. So that over 23 players dont' miss out and we can provide for those people who struggle to play early games midweek.

Sorry, I cannot follow the argument.

The YL is clearly targeted at solving probs in the 17 -22 yo bracket. (see second message in this thread)

As I already argued above, there are never going to be more players in ABL, so to create a "league of hopefulls" and advertise it as a pathway to ABL seems a red herring.

Now Triton and Juno above suggest that not the younger but the older players missing out in the curent system?
Why, and how would a YL solve that?

I though the younger players were pretty well monitored by older ones in the current system?

If BSA want to retain players in the 17-22 yo bracket, they need to
1. create more opportunities for them to have a decent game
2. encourage the formation of stable teams.

As far as I can see,
U23 (while removing U20) will not create opportunities for more players, but it encourages more floaters, more adhoc teams week after week.
That won't help the sport.

The proposal solves the problem of having U20/21 and Div 2 on the same night, where ABA players may be required to play Div 2 so reducing the standard of the U20/21 comp.

The proposal creates a real problem in retaining 17/18 year old players that are not yet ready for an ABA squad/Div 2 spot, but could be squeezed out of Youth League Div 1. In the girls there probably won't be a Youth League Div 3, so an U18 Div 1 player could be faced with a choice of bottom grade Youth League, Div 3/4/5 Seniors or A grade netball. Easy choice.

There seems to be a fantasy involved in this process that big crowds are going to turn up on a Tuesday night for Youth League. At present. there seem to be more spectators on a Wednesday night than a Tuesday night. I don't know why - maybe the players have more friends!

Last year, we did not have U20 and div2 on the same night. This created a problem, because young ABL players played 3 games: They played or benchwarmed at ABL games, played U 20 and senior Div 2. This didn't leave enough room for others.

Placing div2 and U20 on the same night reduced the number of games these young ABL players can play to two: U20 and ABL, or Div 2 and ABL.
I.m.o. this was a good idea: it gives more players an opportunity to play a good game, and doesn't burn out the junior ABL players.

The YL will turn this back. Therefore, BSA will again end up with losing players from the comp.

The players who will leave are the younger ones, presently just below ABL standard, but possibly still developing. The reason they will leave is that there is no place for them in the competition, as the spots will again be taken up by the handful of the best.

In short, the way to retain players is by creating opportunities for more players.
YL creates more opportunities for fewer players.
Not hard to figure out what the consequences will be!

Follow whatever Victoria is doing, time SA caught up with the rest of the planet.

Here's a different slant
Feburary to August have ABL and Div 2.

September to February have Youth league and Div 2.

Play Youth League on a saturday night.

That way the resources of a club can truly focus on the team in Season. Abl coaches then have access to developing players over Summer in a genuine preparation for Winter season.
Older players get to have their break!!

Reply to #280967:

True, social aspects get in the way at that age.

But I know several good - only just not good enough for abl- players who left the senior competition because it didn't offer the appropriate level for them.

The better players play in multiple divisions (U20, ABL, DIV2, 3-5 games per week), and this doesn't leave enough room for others.

The motivated slightly lower tier has the option to join at a level where they do not feel challenged, and where the attitude towards training is often slack. They watch their game deteriorate for a while and then give up.

YL is going to reinforce this. BSA may not see this as a problem (#280906 clearly thinks it isn't).
But if they want to keep more players in the age bracket involved, they should follow a different tack.

Allowing clubs to have second teams in div 2 may help to keep things entertaining.
Adding a YL instead of replacing U20 with a YL is another option.
Imo the best measure would be to restrict the number of teams a player can be involved in to 1 (one). So if you play ABL, you cannot play div 2 or U20.
Your choice: be an abl bench warmer or a good div 2 or U20 player.
That works in juniors; why not in seniors?

I know, that'll never happen... Next best: restrict the number of teams any player can be in to two.

old school u20's last game on a friday night was and should return to being the go.

If i was U20 D1 player who was serious about basketball, i'd make sure i didn't have any work commitments that interfered with my basketball.

I think a reasonable majority of young ones want it both ways (work when they want and still play D1 U20's and ABL), rather than prioritise.

Old school thoughts but it worked back then.

How will ABL coaches improve their existing players when the "benchies" have to miss ABL monday trainings?

Who's on the committee and what "real" understanding do they have of the impact theior decisions willl have on the whole senior (U20s, Magoos, ABL) basketball program in SA?

Anyone favor:
1 - U20's back to friday nights,
2 - Magoos stay put,
3 - Magoos:
A:Must field 6 players, &
B:have minimum 50% U23s play?

If you're good enough, you'll play Magoos.

Don't think the proposed YL decision is about basketball, it seems more about cash! Ker-Ching!

If BSA were serious about increasing basketball participation rates, they'd look outside of the elite/top end and more at the after school/social side.

'If BSA were serious about increasing basketball participation rates, they'd look outside of the elite/top end and more at the after school/social side'

Pickles ex-housemate, I think you'll find the charter for Basketball SA is to run the elite-level competitions and looki after SA representative teams. I thought that's why there is a move toward District clubs forming associations and running after school and association comps to increase participation.

My understanding is that the Under 23 Youth League is aimed at bridging the gap for elite level juniors towards the ABL level.

Interested, fair call if the charter says that, but it could also be a fair indication of the reasons why basketball isn't at the same level as it used to be in this state.

I'd be interested to see how many clubs are running successful afterschool and social competitions.

U20 D1 used to be the elite level competition for Juniors in this state.

I may be holding on to the past a little, but I just don't see the benefits to the whole competition by going down this path.

Sturt still run City South. It seems to be succesful in helping them win the last 6 State Champs.

It's going ahead.

not what i have heard pickles