Steelers Head Coach expression of interest.

Sadly earlier this week ex WBA gate keeper and WBA Life Member Ken Benford lost his fight with cancer.
Ken routinely manned the stadium entrance for us over 25 years. Ken initially took over from Bill Kemp (Pat’s Husband) our previous long time Gate keeper after he fell ill in the early ...90’s. Ken was not a basketballer, but his kids had been involved for many years so he decided to put his hand up to help. He continued in this role as his Grandchildren came thru the junior ranks.
Ken also helped out with many other roles for the WBA over his time. He officially retired from his position in 2020.
Condolences to his wife Pat and his family, he will be missed.

Attention all clubs. Training and forfeit invoices were sent out, however, I have just realised the bank information was incorrect on the invoices. I do apologise for this. I have corrected the invoices and resent them out for payment. Each invoice has gone to the club email addresses ...club@whyallabasketball.

Thank you
WBA Treasurer

The following has been stolen from a club as a write up to their members. It is a very succinct account of the meeting held recently and the outcome which will
answer some of our members questions post on our page;

Winter Season Cancelled:
Official update
Club administrators ...recently met to thrash out a solution to our winter season dilemma.
Pre registration numbers were down by 50%. This made it logistically impossible to play the majority of our competitions. There were not enough numbers for divisions in any junior grades. And even with merging divisions (which is always a disaster) we still only had 2 viable girls competitions (U16G and U10's). Boys numbers were stronger but still very sketchy in the U12 and U14 age groups.
In seniors there were no viable men's competitions, and only one viable Women's comp (WC grade). We considered merging multiple grades to make competitions. But feedback was that player ability would be so disparate that this would not work.
It was agreed that it would not be fair to offer competitions for some age groups and not offers. The reduced 10 week season format, made trying to make all this work even less palatable.
The final decision was highly influenced by the reality of the end of Summer season. It was a train wreck! With a record numbers of forfeits and player absenteeism + loss of officials and critical support staff. Many of our finals were tainted by this and one GF even abandoned on the day.
Managing this from an administration point of view e.g. chasing fill in players etc, was a time consuming nightmare for our volunteer coaches and committee members.
Since then the number of cases in Whyalla has increased and continues to trend upward. It was also tabled that when the mask mandate was lifted in the eastern states case numbers Doubled or tripled, thus this situation is going to get worse!
At the moment football clubs are all struggling for numbers + Observations of Netball and Soccer currently scrambling to prevent game cancellations are bad signs for basketballs success.
The above facts plus being a higher risk indoor sport and up against these dominant winter sports unfortunately outweighed the desire to play.
Whyalla is spoilt in that the WBA is one of a hand full of regional Associations that offer Winter basketball. The WBA never suffered from a drop in membership in Winter 2020 when Covid shut down our winter season. In fact often the opposite occurs, having a break drives anticipation and interest come summer.
Having said all that it was extremely disappointing to have to cancel the season when we had so many people wanting to play 😞

Enjoy your break, we will back before you know it for a bigger and better Summer Season.

WINTER SEASON 2022

All Clubs met last night to work out where we were at in terms of numbers in an attempt to get Winter 2022 season off the ground. Despite numerous permeations being worked on for numerous grades throughout the association we were unable to make it work. Whilst some ...grades were completely full, other grades could not get comps together, our seniors would have needed up having multiple grades combined, ie A B and C grade combine to make a competition. All clubs present agreed that this was unworkable and not suitable to their clubs, as such it was decided that we will return for Summer 2022-23 without a winter season.

This is a sad decision, and we hate making it, anyone who understands the people involved in running our association would know that not having a competition running is a regrettable, but those same people have to ensure the long-term aspect of our association. The WBA will work hard over the break to ensure that we are ready to fire back into action when summer season rolls around. Please keep a look out for trainings that we will offer to get more refs involved, we are seeking more experienced members of association to put their hands up and get involved in umpiring, if you ever considered “giving back” to your sport this could be a way of doing so.

We will keep you informed as to any news, events etc during the break so keep an eye on the page. See you all at the commencement of Summer 2022-23, rest up, enjoy the break and most of all look after yourselves.

The window for registering your intention to play winter season closes tomorrow night. We will be making decisions based on the numbers we have after close off. If and it’s an if we have enough numbers to make certain grades which maybe combined from the existing numbers we will be doing so from ...the persons that have registered

Please don’t hold off to see what happens and then think that there maybe spots for you or your team when grades/comps are made. You may find yourself disappointed if you don’t get your name down before close off tomorrow night.