Basketball shake-up shoots for lift

CHANGES are afoot for the Townsville Basketball competition, with the board and the region’s six clubs devising how the 2020 season will take shape.

The major changes come in the junior competition structure, where the association will move to a summer and winter season model instead of running in line with the first half and second half of a calendar year.

Townsville Basketball general manager Mark Wrobel said the opportunity was there for the association to grow into a greater force from the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the sport’s postponement enabled them to complete a comprehensive review of their operations and examine what they could do to take basketball forward.

“When we examined our membership trends over the past decade, we knew we needed to make some changes to how we were doing things if we wanted to make any significant gains in our membership base,” Wrobel said.

“One of the issues we identified within our junior structure was that our previous competition design limited our scope to gain new players as we were directly competing against almost every junior sport.

As for the senior calendar, Wrobel said no drastic changes were to come, given the two competitions had been more separated in recent times.

He said those outlets would instead involve changes to the season length and allow for more social basketball which will include a new Masters competition.