Basketball booming with 3500 players in HB

Ex-Olympian Kirstin Daly-Taylor is doing her share at grassroots level. PHOTO/FILE

Basketball is the No 1 "second sport" in the world and Hawke's Bay is bracing for a boom in the code.

"Netball acquired a bit of explosion with extra courts at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park [in Hastings] so if we gain four to five indoor courts we'd be the same," says outgoing Basketball Hawke's Bay general manager Paul Trass.

"We've got every facility we can get in the Bay and we're booked to the gunnel," says Trass of a code that uses the Pettigrew-Green Arena, Rodney Green Centennial Hall, Hastings Sports Centre, Flax Rock and eight other school gym and halls in the province to stage games in a week.

The code hasn't sold the 3-on-3 format here as such but "it'll be scary if it pushes on".

Trass says when the Cricket World Cup was on earlier this year they lost Centennial Hall but still had a 22 per cent growth in the sport.

The adults' section is starting to grow again as high schoolers drop off into Open teams.

It also was growing through "virtual teams" where social players formed teams with friends before branching into competitive ones.

"Rugby and netball are the major winter codes so we're playing around them," he says, adding there were 100 teams when he became GM nine years ago with a turnover of $69,000 but this year there are 1000 teams with a turnover of $1 million.

"It's frustrating when people go ra-ra about 1500 at an event because we tend to do that every week."

The code has about 3500 registered players but they anticipate it'll mushroom to 4000 soon.

China, he points out, has 400 million registered basketballers, a code that boasts a 50 per cent split in gender participation.

Trass lauded former Olympian, Tall Fern and Bay professional basketballer Kirstin Daly-Taylor for rolling her sleeves up to coach to coach rep girls with the help of past players Jo Richards and Carley Glock.