The Step-2-Rep Next Gen Echuca Pirates session will be held on Sunday, July 13 at Echuca Stadium from 10am to 11am.
The session is free for families of boys and girls players under-12 years old, as a way to educate interested players in what being an Echuca Pirate entails and learning about basketball in general.
The event is open to players of all abilities, and all that is required is your own basketball and drink bottle.
“It’s a new program that we have brought in for this year to introduce new families that may be thinking about their children playing representative basketball but don’t know what it’s all about,” Echuca-Moama Basketball Association president Lisa Baker said.
“It’s just an hour session to see what it’s all about and information for parents to see whether it’s something they’d like to pursue.
“It’s a basic skills session for the kids run by our director of coaching Luke Carnegie, and it’ll be a bit of fun and give the players a bit of experience of what the training will be like.”
Baker highlighted the event as part of a push to invest in young and local basket-balling talent, adding how important it is to nurture players and keep them in the club system through much of their development.
“We’ve got roughly 20 kids interested currently but more can turn up on the day, you don’t have to register, just so we can hopefully get a few more kids to nurture from under-12s right up until the under-18s,” she said.
“It's so important for us to bring them through our system, we try to have at least two teams in the under-12s every year, as kids get older, and they go up the ranks we want to retain them in the sport.
“We want them confident about their basketball at a young age so that they don’t feel under-prepared or out of the loop when they get to those higher grades.
“We’ve got many kids registered, roughly 200 for our Pirates’ try-outs on June 30, which is amazing and there are a lot of new faces there which is fantastic.”
For more information, contact Rick Sellars on 0459 111 706.
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