OuR Project:

This year, we are raising money to help our club achieve its dreams: 

• Increase participation
• Focus on the development of our club at the grassroots level; offering weekly, planned, sessions and regular match-play to help less-experienced players to better understand the sport. 
• 1st Team: To win their BUCs league and reach the finals of the National Trophy
• Create a community, within the club, to ensure a positive future for Women’s Basketball at Exeter

Who are you?

We are a relatively small club, of around 50 members, consisting of 2 teams.  

2 BUCS teams: 

• 1st Team: Our first team consists of girls with backgrounds in the sport and have developed a particularly strong team chemistry over their past few seasons together. In recent years, they have competed comfortably in BUCS Western Tier 1 (and reaching the National Trophy semi-finals last season). This season, they have the ambition to achieve first place in their BUCS league, as well as reaching the finals of their National Trophy competition.

• 2nd Team: This year, 2023, we have entered a 2nd team into BUCS, with the intention of giving more of our members regular matches against players of a similar age and ability. This is an incredibly exciting, and positive, step-forward for our club; we have seen a great uptake in interest to compete for this team, attendance and participation at training has improved; and it has helped players to build friendships. 

• Our ‘2nd team’ also extends to players who don’t compete in BUCS - we cater for a range of players and interests: those who aren’t able to commit to BUCs; don’t want to compete; or don’t feel ready to compete. 

• These players have weekly sessions with our BUCs players, in addition to weekly socials, which offers them the opportunity to both progress in the sport and meet new people!

Our story

Despite our small size, we have big dreams for the club, in both the short and long-term. However, right now our greatest barrier to achieving these goals is seemingly financial. 

Due to the size of our club and the costs we face to both run it and to compete, our individual team players have to bear a much greater financial burden than might be the case for other (larger) AU clubs. This makes our club far less accessible than others, when we are already disadvantaged by the scale of participation of women’s basketball in England. 

We are creating this page in the hope that we can address this problem, helping to make our efforts to grow the club and improve member’s experience a reality. 

In the long term, we hope that this support can help to make our memberships more financially attainable, in term increasing our members and reducing the costs/player. 

Where will the money go?

If we hit our target, the funding will be spent towards: 

Coaching:

• 1st Team: Currently, our 1st Team training is run by an external coach, Chris, who has an extensive background in coaching basketball. He joined our club at the beginning of our 2022 season, vastly aiding the development in the team’s ability, performance and chemistry - achieving 3rd in BUCS and reaching Top 4 in the National Trophy, last season.  Our hope is to maintain our relationship with Chris and secure a bright future for our 1st Team, however is ultimately determined by the club’s capacity to fund this coaching. In our current position, this future is seeming unlikely, unless we were to increase membership fees. 
• 2nd Team: Receiving 2 sessions, each week, which are planned and run by 4 members of our 1st Team. These training sessions have been positively received, in terms of both participation and feedback. It is also a great opportunity to better integrate players from different teams. Although these 1st Team players volunteer to coach, the additional financial support towards funding Chris’ coaching, will relieve them of the pressure to run their own training sessions. Allowing them to dedicate more time and effort into to organising 2nd Team training - hence, benefiting all club members. 

Improving our member’s general experience: 

If we exceed our target, we intend to invest our additional support back into improving member experience through purchasing new basketballs and a new playing kit for our 2nd team.

Find us here

INSTAGRAM: @uoewbasketball

TIKTOK: @uoewbasketball

Help us succeed!