Hello Parents,
We’d like to invite you to learn more about Baranof Ballers. We developed Baranof Ballers because we believed Sitka needed a more structured youth basketball program that works with kids from kindergarten all the way up to 8th grade with the goal of getting them ready for the high school program. We will have both basketball coaches from Sitka High-girls and boys in advisory roles to help ensure our program is on track for preparing kids for the next level. We are striving to have an organized club that will provide consistency, accountability and growth for basketball from board, committees, coaching all the way down to our players.
Below is a description of the structure for Session 1. If you have any comments or suggestions, please e-mail [email protected]; all comments are welcomed and appreciated but please keep in mind we may get great suggestions that won’t be incorporated until next year program due to the time constraints.
Session 1 overview
Our goal for session 1 is to focus on skills, Fundamentals and GAMES. We feel that Sitka’s biggest struggle has been getting our kid’s games and game ready for tournament play. Under the previous model, we didn’t feel like the season games were competitive enough to be prepared for tournaments.
Our concept is to group kids by a couple grades (and by gender for the older age groups) for example: 7/8 grade, 5/6th grade 3/4th grade (there may be slight adjustments made to this breakdown once we get the final enrollment numbers). Once the grade groupings have been established we will have a panel of coaches separate the kids into even teams (easier said than done), which should lead to fun and competitive games for the players. The goal is to have every game be a nail biter which will give kids the game experience they need and make watching games much more enjoyable for friends and family. Additionally, this will make practice squads much smaller which will give kids more one on one time with their coach or coaches.
Unfortunately, the disadvantage to having smaller teams (which means more teams) is that we need more volunteer coaches, officials and gym time which all cost additional money; we are working hard to collect donations to help keep the costs down; this is a nonprofit so if at the end of year there are additional funds, that money will be reinvested into next year’s program by way of new equipment, lower fees, etc. We are looking forward to a great season and hope you will join us.
Sincerely
The Board of the Baranof Ballers