Creative solutions must be found by the Basketball Hawkes Bay staff once again in order to avoid turning children away from playing basketball. In Term 2, one of the creative solutions was to expand out to non-advertised venues for Year 1&2 miniball in Hastings. This hardly turned any off the game though, as Hastings miniball has seen another spike in participation for Term 3 2019.

Term 3 has produced recorded entries for Basketball Hawkes Bay's miniball competitions, and BBHB Basketball Manager Morgan Maskell is stretching his imagination to find ways to fit all the miniball in. "The reality is, we are constantly finding band-aids to solve our issues each term, but the problem of a complete lack of court space is not going on. Every day of inaction from our councils and other key decision makers in our region, is a day closer to us having to turn children away from playing sport due to inadequate resources."

Term 3 will see Basketball Hawkes Bay create smaller courts for Year 3&4 teams in Hastings only, just to fit all the games in. "We couldn't acquire alternative venues in Hastings, or if we could other problems just sprung up from there. We were going to have games starting at 9.55pm for 11 year olds if we didn't do something. Making the court smaller allows us to fit 6 games at a time at the Hastings Sports Centre; 12 teams instead of 8." Hardly the ideal solution, but for now Basketball Hawkes Bay will make it work. As this current trend of participation increases, BBHB will have to choose between starting miniball games at unacceptably late times or having to turn children away from basketball all together.

"You can only fit two teams on a court at once, if more and more teams want to play, we are going to start playing at some dreadful times," explains Maskell, "The final round of miniball games start at 8.30pm at Pettigrew Green Arena this Thursday 25 July, and it's about as late as we could possibly want to go for kids that are only 10, 11 or 12 years old," says Maskell, identifying the fact that Basketball Hawkes Bay are all too aware of the issues lack of court space present with young children.

Basketball Hawkes Bay has been crying out for help to anyone that will listen over the last few years about the predicted court crisis, but it may be too late for basketball in the region now that it has arrived. BBHB not only needs to fit in competitions, but cater for a range of programmes it delivers. "The aim is to offer an appropriate level of basketball where it is fun and the right challenge for anybody regardless of their gender, age or ability. But we just can't do that with our lack of resources." In March & April, BBHB were unable to offer any adult competitions with a litany of miniball and youth programmes taking up all of the available court space in the region. Currently, BBHB is stretched to find court space for it's Under 13s along with community programmes for beginners, females and Social & Elite adult competitions.

A record 250 teams will participate in the Napier & Hastings Miniball competitions in Term 3, which is approximately just over 1,500 players participating in miniball just in Term 3 alone. Staggering participation numbers for the #2 most participated in Secondary School sport in NZ (#1 for males).