The Templar Warriors Newsletter
Issue Number 9
Friday, 2nd September, 2022
Christianity through Hoops
Our program was established in a large degree due to Christian principles that we had passed onto us through our mentors as we grew up in our youth. In consideration of this we have designed a “Christianity through Hoops” program to complement schools with Christian fundamentals or shared values We know that this applies to most if not all independent schools.
Our purpose is not just to develop better basketball players, but also to develop better people. We believe sport can be a great influence on our youth and what better way to do that than to reinforce Christ’s message, not just to our players but to their parents and wider networks as we build our basketball program.
To build what we ultimately have ambitions for, it would be great to build partnerships with Independent, Catholic and Christian Schools alike.
Please read this email and ones from earlier this year and if your school would like to assist us in building this program, then please get in contact with us to discuss our plans and objectives.
We've been busy
It’s been a while, but were back into our newsletter mode after a stint away. There is a good reason why you haven’t hear from us for a while. We have been extremely busy and we are going to be even busier for the remainder of the school year. Check out this newsletter to see what we have been up to.
News, announcments and updates
Westall Boys start with the BMBA
A lot has happened since our last newsletter.
One of the most exciting things that happened was the formation of a U16 Boys’ team from Westall Secondary College. This came about from a clinic that we run at the school and where we discovered students as keen on basketball as we were.
From that clinic, we recruited seven boys and entered them into domestic competition.
The boys have now played five games in the Southern Basketball Association U16 domestic competition and they have acquitted themselves admirably for a group who have never been coached, let alone played competition basketball before.
With a month or two of proper training behind them, the boys should come on strongly. This is why we established the BMBA and why this development is so exciting, we hope that through our work with schools this will be the first of many teams formed over the next two years.
St Kilda Park Primary School enjoyig our clinics
We have just finished our latest school basketball clinic at St Kilda Park Primary School. We were extremely impressed by the school staff, their support and the enthusiasm of the students.
We were also impressed by some of the talent that was on display as well. The kids were polite, courteous and keen to be involved which ensured everybody had a great time
We eagerly await our next visit to this wonderful school and building a long-term constructive relationship there. St Kilda Park is the latest addition to a growing portfolio of schools that the BMBA have visited and built relationships with across Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs.
We look forward to growing that portfolio while cementing partnerships with schools we have already visited. Why not get your school involved by booking in one of our FREE clinics like St Kilda Park did.
Term four bookings for our School Clinics going gangbusters!
Talking of School visits and FREE clinics, Term Four has become a very busy time as we continue to make an impact across our communities.
At this stage, we already have Clayton North PS, Pinewood PS, Springvale Rise PS and Valkstone PS all locked in and we are also working with other schools to book in some more dates for this term. This will launch us into 2023 very nicely as we look to grow our program numbers.
With more schools to be added into our school program in the coming months, the BMBA is set to grow substantially. This will be of enormous benefit to all involved in our BMBA programs including your schools.
If you would like us to host one of our FREE school clinics at your school, then contact us today to be included into our busy calendar.
Registrations for After-School Training Sessions
for term 4 are now open!
Registrations are now open for our Term Four BMBA After School elite-level training sessions. We now have a variety of days, sessions and venues for parents and students to choose from.
In term 4 we will be conducting after-school training sessions at St Michael’s Grammar in St Kilda, McKinnon Primary School in Ormond and Wellington Secondary College in Mulgrave.
These sessions are conducted on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons.
Through our sessions we conduct the following training program –
Kids First Basketball:- This is an introductory program for those just starting out in the game between 5 and 10 years of age. This is an ideal program for kids to learn fundamental skills in a low-pressure environment before starting in a competition. Sessions are predominately conducted by junior coaches with expereince at representative level or who have trained within our program previously. They will be under the supervision of our more expereinced coaches.
Basketball Plus:- These sessions are aimed at juniors playing in local domestic competitions who would like to receive extra training to develop their games through acquiring better skill sets and game knowledge. Sessions are conducted by experienced coaches to an elite level.
IDP Training:- This training is aimed at players who are already playing at a high level, such as representative basketball players, who want more intensive training to improve in all areas of their game. Sessions are conducted by experienced coaches to an elite level.
To obtain more information and to register for term four CLICK HERE
We have just added Wellington Secondary College to our training venue options
This week we have started after-school sessions at Wellington Secondary College in Mulgrave. For the final weeks of term three, we are conducting our After-School “IDP” training sessions.
From Term 4 we will be expanding this to include our Kids First Basketball, our Basketball Plus Training sessions along with our IDP sessions. This now adds to the sessions we are conducting at St Michaels Grammar and McKinnon Primary School with more schools to come.
We are excited by this development as we have three Primary Schools close to Wellington SC that can utilise these sessions where we will be conducting our school clinics in Term Four. This can only add to our program and make it better and stronger moving forward.
From a program that didn’t exist at the start of 2022, in just under three terms we are now operating from three school venues across the South Eastern and Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. That’s an amazing achievement.
If your school has an indoor gym and you would like to have us running sessions for your students on site after hours then please get in touch
To check out our session details and what we offer through our programs, please CLICK HERE.
Would your school like to build a partnership with us?
Would your school be interested in working in partnership with us?
We are looking for school venues to establish as headquarter venues for our BMBA program where we can develop both school teams for their various school competitions and BMBA representative teams to enter into domestic competitions.
We would be looking to develop morning and afternoon sessions where children and parents can have the convenience of having a training session before going to classes. after finishing classes or in the evening.
We would be open to establishing such a partnership with either a primary or secondary school. Ideally, your school would have an indoor gym, but if not and you are still keen, then we would be happy to discuss options.
Once established your students would have weekly access to high-level coaches with playing or coaching experience at a high level. These coaches would then look after school teams in tournaments and competitions and your school would have a first-class sports program embedded within its curriculum.
There would be terrific benefits for your school, for your students and of course for our BMBA program. We would love to hear from you to discuss this further if you would be interested in such a partnership.
Teams for tournaments, competitions and tours
We are searching for junior boys and girls from U10’s through to U18’s to form teams to represent the BMBA in competitions, tournaments and tours.
This will ultimately also include tours to the USA and Europe. We will be looking at our first USA tour at the end of next year. Interested players would need a 12 month lead in time to prepare for such a tour. This will include, training, competitions and tournaments. It will also include time to save money aand raise funds to cover such a trip.
These are exciting opportunities for students who love their basketball. If you think you would have such students interested, then we would love to come out to your school promote these opportunities to them and answer any questions that they may have.Teaching staff may be also interested in getting invovled as we will need chaparones and team assistants on tour.
In the next edition we will be providing further details about this exciting service addition to our program, but if you know of any students who would be interested right now then please give them our contact details so we can discuss this with them straight away.
Alternatively, contact us to arrange a visit to your school.
Zoom Q and A. Ask us your questions online
We want to allow interested parents, teachers, school staff and juniors to gather more information about the BMBA while also being able to ask questions of us about our programs, our people and our objectives. So we decided to arrange this through Zoom Q and A meetings where you can do all of this from the comfort of your own home.
These meetings will be conducted every Sunday evening at 7:00pm. To obtain a registration link for these Zoom sessions please CLICK HERE.
Check out what's happening at the BMBA
There is plenty happening at the BMBA at the moment. Opportunities to join teams, register for a holiday camp or an after-school training program and for a few weeks received two programs for the price of one. Check it all out by clicking on the images below.
SEPTEMBER HOLIDAY CAMP
AFTER-SCHOOL TRAINING
Players and Coaches News
Joe wins MVP in debut season!
Joe Davis, our Canadian All-Star import, has had a stellar year and that has just been emphasised in the past week.
Joe has led his BIG V league in scoring, won two player of the month awards and now has won the competition’s MVP for the season. More importantly, he has led his Pakenham team into a Grand Final series where this weekend they will be playing for a title.
That’s one hell of a season!
We are proud of Joe’s achievements and our role in bringing Joe to our shores and setting him up with Pakenham. This has ensured Joe can participate in our school clinics and school holiday camps.
Congratulations Joe and good luck with your remaining games in the Grand Final Series.
Jon's successful BIG V season concludes!
Our other import from North America, Jon Kirkman, also just finished up a successful BIG V season.
Coming in after the commencement of the season, Jon broke into an incredibly strong Melbourne University squad in the BIG V Men’s division one competition. That’s one level above the division Joe plays in. Jon ended up being an important member of a squad that lost just one game for the regular season. Sadly that season came to an end last weekend when Melbourne University was upset by Bellarine in their semi-final series.
Jon averaged 12.15 and 4.62 rebounds per game in his first season in the BIG V. A great effort considering his late start. We are extremely fortunate to have two players of the calibre of Joe and Jon involved in our program in 2022.
Can you help us spread the word?
Last week we finished delivering in person a letter, an A3 poster and ten B5 flyers to over 120 primary and secondary schools. The flyer/poster is shown on the right. We would be so grateful if you can help us to raise awareness of our new program and what it offers for both your school and your students.
To continue to be able to provide our clinics to schools we need participants to register with any one of our fantastic programs. We now have high-standard venues and quality coaches who provide high-level independent training and coaching. This has meant that in a very short time we have put together an amazing basketball product especially for juniors. To nourish and grow our programs though, we need people to register their kids into the program.
In doing so this will enable us to continue to come out to schools such as yours to run our clinics
You can help us to build this program so it remains in place for your students and schools for years to come by spreading the word about our program.
You can right-click on the image on the right to share it on social media, or you can left-click to go to a PDF version that you can print and distribute to friends, families and associates.
Support our sponsors.
We can’t provide our great programs and our FREE school clinics without the support of our partners below. Click on their logos below to go to their websites to find out more about them.
Why the Templars?
We chose the Templars as we believe some values are eternal.
We don’t just want our symbol/mascot to project strength and tenacity, we want it to be something that defines our culture and the values we want to embed amongst our participants and players.
While the Templar Knights were fierce Medieval Warriors, they also lived by a code of honour, respect, courage and they dedicated their lives to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of servitude towards others.
We believe that this represents the culture we want to build within our program perfectly.
Christianity through Hoops
As we said earlier in this email we have designed a “Christianity through Hoops” program to complement Independent, Catholic and Christian schools more generally. Our purpose is not just to develop better basketball players, but also to develop better people. We believe sport can be a great influence on our youth and what better way to reinforce Christ message not just to our players but their parents and wider networks as well.
Younger Kids
We do our best to group participants to match their ages and abilities as much as possible. This ensures the kids obtain as much enjoyment as possible from their time with us. Generally, for younger kids, the emphasis is as much on having some fun while being taught some new skills to use in their domestic games or programs.
In teaching these skills we do so as much as possible through drill formats with the kids in teams and engaging in competitive drills with plenty of encouragement and with more emphasis on attempting to use their newly taught skills as on winning.
Older Kids
For our older groups, we teach them more through simulated match situations and scrimmage games. Drills are still used but with the mindset of using these drills to develop skills for games situations and then putting them into those game situations.
While still focusing on enjoyment and fun, older participants are normally looking for more challenging training and coaching with a greater emphasis on competition and challenges with the skills being taught.
Girls
Our training is designed for both boys and girls. Where numbers permit we organise girls into “girl only” groups which make things more enjoyable for the girls. We also design different skills challenges for the girl’s groups.
In the unusual event (especially in the older groups) that a girl or girls would prefer to join in with the boys, we would look at that situation where capabilities permit it.
Boys
Of course, our training is open for boys as well. As with the girls, we look to form them into boys-only groups. This again is dependent on the number of enrolments we have.
These groups are sorted along both age and capability lines as well as keeping kids in their friendship groups where possible. Most importantly, as best as possible we place participants in groups where they are comfortable with their current skill level and where they can obtain the most enjoyment from their participation in the BMBA program.
For the more motivated
We also have groups for those players who are more motivated and wish to obtain more serious training to improve their game. We can either form them into a separate group or embed them in a group and simply provide them with more challenging drills and skills for them to use and learn from.
They will receive condensed high-level coaching and drills that will challenge them and help them improve their current skills considerably or learn new ones for future games and opportunities.
Our Coaches
Our Coaches are predominately players Bob has brought through with him via his caching career. They all have predominately graduated through Bob’s representative basketball programs. We also recruit coaches from Universities and schools who have either played or coached at a high level. All our coaches are trained in the drills and basketball programs that we implement and are supervised through all our sessions. Naturally, all of them will have to obtain and provide Working with Children Checks to be able to work with us, where they are old enough to have one.
Our Venues
At the moment we operate from outdoor school courts due to Covid-19, but we are now working to secure an indoor court now that schools have reopened from lockdowns.
We are looking for a venue in the South East Suburbs of Melbourne, preferably within the boundaries of the cities of Glen Eira, Bayside or Kingston.
If your school fits that bill and wants to help us have kids in our community become involved in a positive recreation and program while making some revenue for your school, then contact us to discuss the possibilities.
Book a clinic today!
We are now ready and willing to go. So book us in to visit your school to promote our sport, our program and the possibilities we can present for many of your students.
CLICK HERE to contact us today to book us into a visit to your school.
BOB MANN BASKETBALL ACADEMY (BMBA): ABN 33 497 866 231
CONTACT NAME: Bob Mann
CONTACT EMAIL: bob_mann@bmba.net.au
CONTACT MOBILE: 0490 823 400
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