North Shore gym facilities are struggling to accommodate the number of children wanting to play basketball. Photo / Alex Burton
North Shore gym facilities are struggling to accommodate the number of children wanting to play basketball. Photo / Alex Burton
Harbour Basketball has resorted to extreme measures at the grassroots level to cater for the overflow of participants.
Kids as young as 10 are playing until 9pm on weekdays due to a shortage of indoor courts, presenting further challenges to officials and administrators trying to keep youth-level participants engaged inthe sport.
Match durations in certain competitions have been halved. Meanwhile, player fees remain at about $120 per person, reflecting the added expenses incurred by the association to support these changes.
The association oversees about 600 primary, intermediate, and secondary school teams - which results in about 10,000 games across eight venues on Auckland’s North Shore over two seasons in a year.
North Shore gym facilities are struggling to accommodate the number of children wanting to play basketball.
Photo / Alex Burton
However, the demand has forced young players to compete at locations ranging from the YMCA in Northcote to Massey University in Albany, during weekday hours from 4pm to 8.30pm.
Dionne Moors, Milford Bay and Campbells Bay Primary sports co-ordinator, told the Herald basketball is “all over the show” compared to other codes and it’s left parents frustrated.
“People are travelling from venues all over the North Shore,” Moors said.
“From week to week, it can change. We’ve had teams miss their games because they are confused about what venue to go to.
“It’s frustrating because of the amount of effort it takes for kids to be involved in a sport, and for parents to go out in the evenings to take them to a sport.”
In some leagues, Harbour Basketball has introduced 10-minute halves as opposed to 10-minute quarters.
“You might be coming out at 8pm... and you could get eight minutes of sports in total out of the 20 minutes available to the team,” Moors said.
“It’s obviously disappointing.”
A staggered system has also been introduced, where different leagues play on alternate weeks, leading to an irregular number of byes which could see teams play fixtures four weeks apart.
Tyler Martin, Harbour Basketball’s competitions administrator, said in a worst-case scenario, games could be four weeks apart. Photo / Alex Burton
Tyler Martin, Harbour Basketball’s competitions administrator, told the Herald: “In the worst-case unique situation, games could be 4 weeks apart. This would be a rare occurrence, although it is typical to play 2 games every 3 weeks”.
“One week, one league will play, the next week they’ll have a break - just because we simply cannot fit them in - and another league will play,” Martin said.
“We’re looking at teams potentially starting on the third week of the competition, which can be quite difficult, especially for those kids that want to play basketball.
“It’s a great problem to have - we have a great team here - we’re trying to figure it out.”
Harbour Basketball chief executive John Hunt told the Herald the organisation has “reached a crossroads.”
Harbour Basketball chief executive John Hunt says the organisation has “reached a crossroads.” Photo / Alex Burton
“We’ve literally run out of stadiums or courts to run the competitions and the demand is still there and so we either have to turn teams away or we have to raise the price of participation,” Hunt said.
“We’re incurring significantly higher costs in terms of venue hire, in terms of wages and so if we want to continue to grow, either there needs to be more courts - and that’s not a quick fix, it’s probably three or four years away from having any more decent capacity - or we turn kids away or we raise prices.
“We philosophically don’t want to raise prices.”
Hunt is placing some of the blame on previous Auckland Councils, suggesting they have been “asleep at the wheel”.
Basketball is the second-most popular secondary school participation sport in Aotearoa behind netball and is expected to become the most popular by 2026.
“You’ve got 12 years of failure by successive councils,” he continued.
“[Basketball NZ are] helpful in the facility space, but really it’s something that only the councils can solve because there hasn’t been a major indoor facility built in greater Auckland for 10 to 12 years and yet all of the growth in sports over that period has been indoor sports.
“The current council are probably more proactive than previous ones. The current council is aware of the problem and is working with us, but it’s prohibitively expensive.”
Pippa Sommerville, head of play, sport and recreation at Auckland Council, said they were in regular communication with Harbour Basketball.
“We are also planning for future community need. For example, we have an additional court planned for a new youth park at Long Bay.
“The council is looking to work with a number of North Shore schools to help co-ordinate basketball at school facilities (including outside of school hours) to ultimately help accommodate the growing number of basketball teams and games.
“Auckland Council recognises there is a regional need for more indoor courts, and over the next 10 years has committed over $150 million for investment in sports facilities through the Sport and Recreation Regional Facilities Investment Fund grant.
“Over the next three years over $23 million per year will be invested into sport and recreation facilities, including indoor courts, through this fund.”
Harbour Basketball said they have received resource consent for an Albany Tennis Park project that would feature 10 badminton courts, four basketball courts, and pickleball courts.
The Herald understands the required sum to be in the tens of millions.
The council’s community committee has allocated $600,000 to support the development of a non-council owned multipurpose sports facility planned by the Harbour Sports Hub Trust in Albany.
The Upper Harbour Local Board has also contributed about $250,000 to this project.
Bonnie Jansen is a multimedia journalist in the NZME sports team. She’s a football commentator and co-host of the Football Feverpodcast, and was part of the Te Rito cadetship scheme before becoming a fulltime journalist.
