The Kids are the Future

Amid the Corletto sackings, the finger pointing at potential cheaters and Seamus McPeake as a whole, the NBL has had some negative press lately.  Some good news for the league is that they have done something that I think is fantastic to give the NBL a better image.  From the article – “The National Basketball League has launched a bold new Community Program that will aim to have NBL players and coaches visit over 150,000 school age children over the next 12 months.”

This has all the markings of a great initiative, and what makes it surprising is that it came from Kristina Keneally (Zing!  Okay, that is my political talk out of the way for the year).  Not only does it get the league brand out of the cities and into the untapped market of the county it also gives the kids a benchmark of what they need to do to become an NBL player.  It gives kids that would not be able to get to an NBL game see their favourite players up close and personal. 

Not only are the teams visiting schools this year, some are going out of their way for Community Round this week.  The Blaze are hosting a ‘Family Fun Day’ prior to their home game while Adelaide and New Zealand are holding auctions for various foundations.  That doesn’t hold a candle to what the Melbourne Tigers are doing, quote the article again – “The Melbourne Tigers will showcase community basketballers in their pre-game and halftime breaks.”  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Are you telling me that what they have been doing at every home game since the dawn of time is now news worthy?  Come on Tigers, lift your game.

My only problem is that the clubs won’t get far enough away from the cities to really get to the outlying areas.  Sure they don’t have to go to every town on the map but will either of the two NSW teams get to Canberra?  Or to the South Coast?  Or to Broken Hill, Wagga Wagga or Grafton?  The school kids in these towns would do anything to see professional athletes and I really don’t think that the Sydney Kings would be willing to go further than Newcastle or Bathurst.  I would like them to, I would do as much as possible to get them down to Merimbula (they rejected my visit to Bombala early last year) but I’m sure that the club will think that it would not be worth coming this far just for a few thousand people when they can get 10 times as many on the outskirts of the city.

This article may have turned to the negative with that last paragraph but on the whole this initiative is awesome.  The league can always do with more fans, especially from the younger generations, and this is a sure fire way of achieving that.  Hopefully this become more of a focus of every club in the future and increased community support becomes the norm and not something that needs a big news article every time a team goes to a school.

http://www.nbl.com.au/news/article/2012/february/nbl-launches-new-community-program/