CLUB HISTORY

Scarborough Seahawks Basketball Club has been together now for 19 years, this year being our 20th anniversary. I am proud to say that our club is probably one of the longest serving amateur basketball clubs in the country. The club was formed by the Head Basketball Coach of Raincliffe School “Steve Roberts” and current Head Coach Steve Race in the summer of 1987. Back then it was a large club with a large Junior Section and both a Men’s and Women’s team, playing in the Yorkshire Basketball League.

After spending 6 years playing at Raincliffe School Sports Hall in Scarborough, the facility started to get a bit worse for wear, so we decided that we needed to keep the club going, and a new venue was desperately needed. At that time most of the new venues in the town had not been constructed, like Pindar Leisure Centre, Yorkshire Coast College and Scarborough Sixth Form, so we had to look outside of the town.

The Northern Ryedale Leisure Centre in Pickering, based at Lady Lumley’s School, showed a big interest in our club moving across from Scarborough, so we decided to make the move. Our club carried on but we had to find a new identity in which we did in calling ourselves the “Ryedale Rockets”.

We carried on what we started back in Scarborough and that was to keep a strong Junior Section linked to our club, as the youngsters are the future. After several meetings with the local bank in the town, back then the Midland Bank (now HSBC), I managed to seal a 2 year sponsorship deal for our Junior Section of the club. This enabled us to hold regular junior sessions and put a team together to hold some friendly games, as there were no junior leagues at this time.

After spending 2 great years at the Northern Ryedale Leisure Centre, Pickering, we were approached by Scarborough Borough Council to move the club back to the Borough and base it at the newly opened Pindar Leisure Centre. As you are aware, this is our current home, in which our club has grown tremendously over the past years, in which we have also gained some new sponsors along the way to help the club push forward to the next level.

A few years past, and it was decided that we really needed to push basketball in the Borough of Scarborough and this is when we took the plunge to start some serious junior development work. We held a lot of fun days, started to go in to the primary schools in the area holding basketball workshops. We joined Sport England’s “Active Sports” programme, which brought youngsters in to our club sessions.

From the primary schools we moved up in to the secondary schools and the local colleges, running taster events and fun sessions. In the easter and summer holidays we staged three and four day basketball camps for the younsters to keep playing basketball in the school holidays. With some of the older junior players, we sent them away to attend a Level 1 Basketball Coaching Award, so they could come back to the club with a recognised England Basketball award, to help assist in coaching the young players.

Also in the summer of 2000, a lot of outdoor basketball courts were erected in the area; on these courts we ran OBI events (Outdoor Basketball Initiative) through the summer months, which proved to be very popular.

At the start of the millennium, Sport England introduced the Youth Games, which was for children under the age of 14. We entered both a boys and girls team at the regional event at York University. The winners of each sport would then go down to the Millennium Youth Games Finals in Southampton. Our boys got to the final but just lost out, but our girls won all there games and booked themselves a place down in Southampton.

After a couple of years of not entering any competition at Junior Level, in 2002 we took the plunge and entered an U17 boy’s team in the Teesside Basketball League. After building up the squad for a couple of years, we did extremely well and won the league in the first year of entering.

We also formed a U17 girls squad, which in my eyes was a Junior National League team, we just at that time did not have the funding or the coaching staff to enter in to the National League, which was a shame, because those girls could play. Once again we entered the Youth Games at U14 level and the Men’s Team entered their 17th consecutive season in the Yorkshire Basketball League.

In 2004/2005 our club took its biggest step forward. We entered the Junior Men’s National Basketball League at U18 level. It was a hard season, with to many injuries to mention, but it was challenging and has help develop some of our younger players to carry on playing basketball at a very high standard. We also entered an U17 girl’s team in a Central Venue League, based in Hull on every last Sunday of the month from May to September, in which our girls won, the trophy is in the cabinet at PLC, next time you are passing take a look.

Also in 2004/2005 our club won “Club of the year” at the Scarborough and District Sports Awards and Head Coach – Steve Race won “Coach of the year”. Last season was the biggest and best season by far. We entered our 18th season in the YBL with our men’s squad, and for the first time, we entered two teams in to the EBL with U16 and U18 boy’s teams.

The highlight of 2004 was our Club being the 1st basketball club in the country to achieve the Sport England Club Mark and also the 1st club in Yorkshire to gain EB 3 * accreditation, and in this year our club had the largest club membership in North Yorkshire, with over 80 members signing on.