Dates

There are no sessions at all on the 3, 4, 5 or 7 December. The gym is being used for mock exams as usual this time of year. Sessions start again from Saturday 8 December.

News

Mike Blatchford coach of our men’s team took the South East U13 Boys team to with in three points of reaching the final of the Regional Development tournament held at Lilleshall National Sports Centre in mid October. Losing out in the semi-final to a strong London team the SE team went on to beat the North West in the third/fourth playoff. This SE team was the highest achieving among all the SE teams who attended the different age groups.

Warwick Cann, British Basketball’s Head of Performance, said:

 “The U13 Boys Regional Development Tournament was a very pleasing event. The regional coaches did a great job of identifying talent with good potential. They also coached well to the Area of Emphasis.” 

Read more about the tournament here

In addition to his coaching time with Cougars Mike has recently been appointed boys head coach for the SE Regional Performance Centre (RPC). You can find more about this here . You might also notice the coordinator for this RPC is Cougars committee member Karen Perrier.

All of this is good news for Cougars coaches who get access to a coach involved at a senior level of England Basketballs approved development programme while our players can be confident they are receiving coaching at the right standard and level. 

England Basketball has put a great deal of effort into developing coaching standards over the last 2 or 3 years. With Mike at the club we benefit directly from this as we develop our own coaches and programme. If you want to know more about England Basketballs approach and how Cougars are supporting and integrating it into our programme Mike would be happy to answer any questions.

There are Regional Development Tournaments for boys and girls of different ages and Cougars were delighted to see Flora Durgerian make it into the girls SE Region u13 team

Flora is one of an increasing number of girls of all ages playing at the club. Over the coming months there will be a meeting for all those who want to contribute to developing a plan to help build the girls section of the club further.

Numbers

Along with developing players and coaches Cougars are keen to improve our communications with members and the community. Last week our Facebook site hit 100 likes but it’s taken us over five months to get there. We would like to see the next 100 take only half that time so please like us now. The Facebook site will be used regularly for match reports and basketball stories of interest. If there is nothing around for your team get organised and start posting some news.

Mobile App

Finally in some recent spare time Karen has developed an app for Cougars over the remainder of the season we will be looking to use this more to communicate with you so take a look here:

If anyone would like to take on developing this further which needs to happen before we use it regularly please contact Karen or Sean info@brightoncougars.com

Remember there are no sessions on the 3, 4, 5 or 7 Dec.