The British Basketball League have launched a brand new ambassadors programme, involving teams and players from across the BBL and the WBBL.
The campaign is set to target 1000 schools and hopes to inspire 150,000 young kids, with stories from players around the league on how they made it as a professional athlete.
Basketball continues to be one of the most actively partaken team sports in the country, sitting in third with 1.2 million people playing ball each week. Even more impressively, the game continues to have a massive impact on the next generation, with 900,000 U16s participating each week, making the sport the second most popular with 14-16 year olds. To add to that, basketball in the UK is one of the more diverse sports with 70% of players in the BBL coming from minority ethnic backgrounds. Those two factors give a campaign such as this a lot of potential to have a positive impact on the next generation.
The idea with this campaign is that the kids are motivated by representation - seeing people from similar backgrounds and upbringing playing a high level of sport and then from that, getting more involved in physical activity themselves.
“Basketball in the UK has the power to inspire the next generation and our league is very fortunate to have so many role models that young people look up to and aspire to be," said Andy Webb, Chief Operating Officer of the British Basketball League. "Our clubs already do a great deal of work in their local communities to address a range of societal issues and we look forward to seeing the impact the sessions have as they begin to take place over the coming weeks.”
Following today's launch of the programme, BBL Clubs will head into local schools to provide thought-provoking sessions and aim to inspire the youth. For more and to follow up on the new Ambassadors programme, visit www.bblinspires.co.uk.