Basketball Push -Girlz Team Riding High
Photo and Article CLINTON LLEWELLYN Hastings Mail

They might look pretty in pink now, but the hope is these young female basketballers will one day be wearing Tall Ferns uniforms.

More than 20 young girls from 10 primary and intermediate schools across Hastings and Napier have been training together weekly as part of the five-week ‘‘Girlz Pink Ball Club’’ pilot programme, run by Basketball Hawke’s Bay.
Programme co-ordinator Kath Samia said the girls-only club was about creating a ‘‘sorority’’ that would increase female participation in the sport at a junior level.
‘‘Junior basketball in Hawke’s Bay is dominated by the boys, so this is a girls-only club, run by girls,’’ said Ms Samia, the mother of three basketball-playing daughters including Melika, 12, a member of the Girlz club.
‘‘While our brief is to develop basketball at a grassroots level, we also want to develop female players that will go on to play at an elite level and the Tall Ferns,’’ she said.
Coaching the pilot programme was Kirstin Taylor, a former Tall Ferns captain, past Olympian, and former head and assistant coach of the Hawks national basketball league (NBL) team.
‘‘Kirstin is the most experienced female coach in the country, and the only woman to coach at NBL level, so to be able to tap into her as skills and expertise as a resource is a winning situation,’’ Ms Samia said.
The members of the first Girlz club ranged in age from 10 to 12 and trained weekly at Taradale High School. The plan was to involve more students aged between 8 and 15 in the programme, at more schools, Ms Samia said.
‘‘The feedback we have had from this initial group of girls has been overwhelmingly positive,’’ she said.