Page 8 - BWA Annual Report 2019
P. 8
THE CHAIR'SREPORT Keith Dunlap
2019 was a year of refinement for the Federation. In the penultimate year of our 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, BWA steered the course towards our vision to establish basketball as “The Sport of Choice” for Western Australians and that basketball is seen as a vehicle for social good, impacting the lives of all Western Australians.
In our first full year of capturing our membership numbers, we found that more people than we thought were participat-
ing in BWA programs both in the Metro and Country areas. The ability to articulate to our Stakeholders the impact and influence of our game has been tremendous. Local, State and Federal Government more understand basketball’s ability to positively impact not only sporting but social issues as well.
Our Regional presence has increased, with BWA Staff now based in the South West, Great Southern, Mid-West, Pilbara and Kimberley regions. Our Metropolitan based staff has increased by 4.5 full time employees to deliver the outcomes our Members called for in our Strategic Plan.
We continue to grow the reach and strength of our game across Western Australia. For
the first time in 2019, we successfully ran an SBL Wheelchair League with four clubs (East Perth, Mandurah, Joondalup and
Cockburn) participating in an 8-week season. The season was a great success in integrat- ing wheelchair basketball into 4 metropolitan clubs with teams having able bodies players and coaches working with the 20 wheelchair players and coaches from the Wheelcats program. Games were well attended around domestic junior competitions which highlight- ed the wheelchair game. 2020 will see our WAIS wheelchair athletes competing for a spot at the Paralympics and we wish them well in their unrelenting endeavours.
Our program continues to grow in the Kimberley and the Pilbara. Both regions have recently had athletes picked in Western Australian high-performance squads and country teams. In the Kimberley, the remote hoops program has started up ongoing competition (run by trained up locals) in
3 more remote communities and in the Pilbara, we are working with locals to create an ongoing Roebourne based program.
In Perth, the 2019 NAIDOC Carnival was a great success and we continue to work with Aboriginal stakeholders to grow opportunities in our pathway. For the first time in 2019 an Aboriginal team from Perth participated in a 3x3 tournament in Bali funded by FIBA and we continue to explore opportunities in Asia.
The SBL is the flagship State League in WA and has a history of over 25 years of producing quality, high level competition. During 2019, there were several proposals to augment the SBL to strengthen that part of our pathway for Western Australian athletes. The process of analysing those proposals
will continue into 2020 to ensure the League meets its Strategic outcomes.
The pathway for our High Performance as well as our Social participants is ever evolving. The Board has looked at how we can best articulate the various pathways to give our participants a clear and informed vision of their basketball potential.
The emergence of the National
Basketball League (NBL) as a dominant influence on both the domestic and inter- national basketball scene, presents us with challenges and opportunities. The Board continues to consult with our Member Associations and the NBL, to find the best path forward.
1 BWA ANNUAL REPORT 2019