New Northern Inland Basketball League launches in Tamworth

Around 160 players from Tamworth, Gunnedah, Inverell, Glen Innes and Armidale participated in the day's activities at the Tamworth Sports Dome.

Tamworth Basketball Association president Scott Ward, who has been one of the driving forces behind the junior development competition, said the numbers exceeded what they were originally anticipating, and were even the indications the Thursday before with around 115 registrations up to then.

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"That was nice," Ward said.

"And we got through a really good day. There was lots of fun to be had, lots of smiles and laughter which is really good.

"We didn't have as many girls as we would have liked involved in program but we had plenty of boys there as well as people doing coaching and referees courses along the way."

"It was just a really good day and a really good start to what we're trying to do with the program."

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Scheduled to continue through to next month, he said they will have a meeting in the next couple of days to discuss how they frame the competition moving forward so that they "get the kids involved and give them the opportunity to keep playing basketball."

The next event in the program is set for October 29.

One thing they would like to see is more girls.

"We're going to try and encourage a few more girls to get involved, because we probably didn't have as many as we would have liked, particularly in sort of under-13 and under-15 age bracket there to be able to put a lot of teams together," Ward said.

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"We got some good games out of them the other day, but there was sort of really only 18 girls there in the 13s and 15s. In the under-11s there was a few more."

The idea behind the competition is to revive interest in the other associations across the region, with junior participation numbers having dwindled.

"It's really about trying to get these other communities involved - Inverell, Glen Innes, Armidale and Gunnedah - and trying to give them a bit of a boost to take back to their towns," he said.

"The thing that I would be expecting is all these kids who did this on the weekend that hopefully they're talking about it at school today, which then gives it a kick along into the next couple of weeks.

"So we'll just see how that sort of goes."

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