Blazing a trail in Ballina/Killaloe
A relatively new basketball club established in Ballina/Killaloe that caters for up to 140 children would dearly love to have a home of its own in order for it to thrive into the future.
With so many people coming to live in the locality in recent decades due to its scenic beauty the Boru Blazers, as the club is called, has a strong international flavour with children of parents from Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands, US and Brazil numbering among its members.
“Even last week we had a number of Ukrainians who turned up to play,” Chairman Jan Foged Pedersen tells The Guardian.
Jan himself, living in Ballina/Killaloe for almost two decades, grew up in Denmark and played in the super league in his native country and the Netherlands, as well as at top high school level in the US and is a former National League player here in Ireland.
Retired from the game for the past 15 years, Jan has turned his attention to refereeing and is now giving back to the community as a volunteer and top official in the local club.
“Our membership has grown very well and we have lots of great coaches (13 in all) and great kids as well,” says Jan.
He says there is hardly any tradition of basketball in the East Clare area, and the club is now reaching out to a catchment of 10 kilometres to try and grow its membership and infuse a love of the game in children and adults in those communities who have had little or no exposure to the game.
“We would love to get new members from places like Ogonnelloe, Portroe, Birdhill and Bridgetown,” says Jan, whose own son Bobby is a member of the local Under 14 squad.
One of the problems for the club as it strives to develop has been a lack of dedicated basketball facilities in Ballina/Killaloe. Currently they are using the facilities at Saint Anne’s Community College in Killaloe. Rental costs are, however, prohibitive and probably not sustainable over the longer term. “Relying completely on facilities that we ourselves do now own is the biggest challenge facing the club,” says Jan.
FUNDING
Funding has been forthcoming from the Clare Sports Partnership, Basketball Ireland and a number of generous local sponsors, but the club has been forced to set membership fees at a relatively high level in order to keep the show on the road.
Jan is frustrated that in these times of severe economic challenges for many families that parents have to fork out relatively substantial sums so their children can continue to play the game. “I feel it’s a bit too much to be charging a seven-year-old child in excess of €100 over a period of 35 weeks for one and a half hours a week with the club,” says Jan. “I think that’s a lot of money.”
His dream would be for the club to have its own facilities, but that seems like a long-term objective. For now the club has to rent and that leaves it with the burden of meeting costs to pay for training facilities. Jan says one practical option would be to have a court developed on the grounds of the local GAA complex run by the Smith O’ Briens club. Currently, the relatively new hall owned by the club has an astro-turf surface, which is not really suitable for basketball. But if a court could be accommodated at the GAA grounds it would be a big breakthrough for the Blazers. A similar obstacle exists at the sports complex at Clarisford where the hall is too small to accommodate a proper court.
“I feel there is a great interest in basketball in the locality with so many kids, but I think our work as volunteers could be made so much easier,” says Jan, referring to the failure to date to get an affordable facility that the club can call its own.
The club has juvenile teams from Under 8 up to Under 16 and men’s and women’s squads and is always seeking new members.