INTRODUCTION
Hi everyone!
Just like that, 2021 is just about behind us. Across that time our community has reached heights not ever reached by our association. Depending upon your view, some of these achievements might be obvious, some less so. Either way, we continue to kick goals and it’s because of the collective work of our community.
Some of those achievements (across all of our business areas) will be highlighted shortly.
While we might be ticking off goal after goal, we certainly are not content as an Association. We are also not any less humble. Our Cougar Family for nearly 50 years has been built on strong family values, hard-work, dedication, and a commitment to people. While the people may change, we don’t believe the ethos has. We might brand it differently, use different words, do new things – but at our core we are ONE FAMILY. That is something that won’t ever change.
2022 represents our 50 year anniversary as the Cockburn Basketball Association. From January 1, you’ll notice a fun change to our logo to begin the celebration of our history across next year. There will be a number of events to celebrate our rich history over the year, and if you have any ideas or want to play a part, please email us directly and we would love you to be involved!
The Association is also incredibly healthy from a business point of view. We have been consistently on the right side of the ledger for four years now with a healthy cash reserve for capital investment and/or (hopefully not) a pandemic. This has allowed us to enhance your experience at the CBA across 2022.
It truly is an exciting time to be a part of our community, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2022 for an even bigger year.
Tyrone Thwaites
Chief Executive Officer
Cockburn Basketball Association
2022 Initiatives:
– A partnership with Lit Therapy, to improve anxiety, performance anxiety and address eating disorders in youth.
– A junior Cougar leadership committee.
– Continued development of the Outside the Locker Room partnership.
– Expanded relationship with Melville LeisureFit
– Westfield Booragoon Hotshots
– Ball at the Bank – partnership with the Left Bank.
2022 Investments:
– A referee coordinator, soon to be permanent part-time (early 2022).
– A new brand and signage to give Wally Hagan a freshen up, something we can all be proud of.
– Spectator fans for summer.
– New scoreboards on all four courts (courts 2-4 coming in January)
– Upgraded office space for our growing staff (upstairs and downstairs)
– Renovated outdoor storage space
– Upgraded changerooms for our NBL1 program
– Brand new participation basketballs (300 arriving January)
– New ipads for competition use
316 total domestic teams (most in CBA history)
235 junior teams (most in CBA history)
37 State Championships teams (most in CBA history)
15 Girls State Championships teams (most in CBA history)
23 WABL teams (most in CBA history)
6 (out of 8) WABL teams have qualified directly into Championship Division
3 (out of 10 in WA) State Title Championships
2 NBL1 teams back in finals for the first time since 2017
1 League MVP for NBL1 West Men – Nic Pozoglou
1 Girls State Title Championship (and the first since 2011).
COMPETITION VENUES, DAYS AND TIMES
One of the biggest (and positive) challenges we face into the New Year, is making sure we continue to provide the opportunity to the wider community that wants to play basketball.Our current four courts at Wally Hagan Stadium are virtually at capacity, and we have worked to acquire more space at Melville LesuireFit in 2022.
We understand the challenges this may present to those inside our existing competition, as we work to shuffle age groups, days and times as best we can to accomodate current and future participants due to growth.
It is our aim over the next 12-24 months to prioritise Saturday morning’s as the competition entry point for our junior basketballers (U8, U10, lower division 12’s). We are aiming to do this with as little disruption to our existing young athletes on a Monday or Tuesday (under 10’s) wherever possible.
In addition, from term two next year, we have acquired Friday nights at Melville LeisureFit centre to continue expanding our competition. As we get closer to winter, we (or your junior club) will be in touch to discuss the changes as a result of acquiring additional space. We are aware there are a number of junior athletes playing quite late during the week, which we are endeavouring to improve by acquiring this space.
The trade off to this, is some divisions will be playing at Melville Leisure Fit as we move forward, which is now our home away from home. This is important, Willetton went through the same growing pains (operating out of 5-6 venues), because the eventual redevelopment of Wally Hagan Stadium can be filled immediately with our external teams returning to a much larger stadium!
Finally, we know teams want to train at domestic level and appreciate the challenges a lack of court space provides in being able to do that. Resultingly, we will be looking to expand our Cougar Academy offering in 2022. This is a program designed for domestic level athletes looking at additional skill development. Our program coordinators Adrian Sgro and Mackenzie Stewart will be reshaping this program to ensure not only athlete, but coach development for domestic coaches can take place to.
If you want to join this program for term one, you can do so HERE.
Below are some key points to note about a potential Wally Hagan Stadium redevelopment:
– The City of Cockburn are highly supportive and are driving the project. There is $15 million committed to the redevelopment of Dixon Park. However, this does not cover the full development of the area and there is an outstanding $10-15 million to complete the project.
– In addition to the outstanding funds, to complete an eight-court facility, the City of Cockburn would have to acquire Roe 9 land from the State Government to the west of Wally Hagan. This is something they are currently investigating.
– The CBA is working with the State and Federal government towards acquiring the outstanding funds,
– Even without the funds, the City will continue through their process of advancing a business case, feasibility and design over the coming two years to ensure the project is shovel ready.
In that time, we have seen enormous progress amongst all of our teams, culminating with argubly our most successful State Titles weekend on record.
As we indicated on social media this week, winning is not our purpose or end game, but it does provide a reasonable indicator of a level of progress. We are strongly investing in process and people, with this being an outstanding by product.
We have coaches committed to getting better, a parent group displaying our values off the floor, and a hard-working group of athletes representing our club with pride.
A summary of week four of State Titles is below.
