Basketball takes off with arrival of Rockets

BASKETBALL in Sonning Common is growing fast following the opening of the recreation ground in July.

The Reading Rockets have set up a hub in the village after being invited by the parish council to run a summer programme using the multi-use gym area at Memorial Park, off Reades Lane.

Steph Johnson, the club’s director of community programmes, said: “We put coaches in place to see if there was interest and within hours of advertising the summer sessions, we had lots of enquiries and when we were there we had 20 kids turning up every hour.

“This area was untouched for us. We hadn’t ventured up the hill past Caversham.

“We thought, ‘Wow’, there was a real need for an actual club further north of Reading so we got in touch with Maiden Erlegh Chiltern Edge School to continue after summer.

“The school was amazing letting us use the facility and now this team has become the Chiltern Edge hub.”

The Rockets have both performance teams and community hub teams.

To be part of a performance team, there are annual trials and a limited number of players are selected.

The community hubs are made up of about 1,200 children and players don’t need to go through a selection process so they can have any experience. They train once a week and only compete against each other.

Mrs Johnson said: “When hubs get full and children are put on waiting lists, we search for other locations but it’s lovely when communities come to us, especially with success stories like Sonning Common.

“This hub filled out more quickly than any hub or summer programme we’ve had.

“The biggest thing was parents emailing us asking if we would keep it going after summer and we thought, ‘We can’t just leave these kids’, they were so hungry for it.

“They made us see that expanding to villages is a really positive thing.”

The Chiltern Edge hub has two teams which are coached by Shaun Romeo assisted by Joseph Gregory as part of an Active Leaders programme to earn his level 1 coaching award.

Mrs Johnson said: “It’s also massively important to have facilities like Memorial Park that people can try new sports in.

“It’s incredibly difficult to hire indoor facilities because they’re so expensive so outdoor spaces for any sport are so important.

“Kids don’t know what they’re good at until they try so they just want to have a go at no cost.

“The weather in this country is sometimes an issue but kids are so resilient, they’ll go out in the rain and not complain.

“I hope kids will look after Memorial Park and be proud to have it.”