How to Bring a Basketball Clinic to Your Community, Step by Step

If you are the recreation coordinator, the youth worker, the athletic director or the council member who ends up organising things, this is the version written for you.

Step 1: work out roughly what you want

Three numbers get you a quote:

• How many kids you expect. Rough is fine — it tells us how many coaches to bring and how many booklets to print.
• The age spread. In many communities it is most of the school, which is normal.
• Dates. Two full days is standard; longer visits can be built.

Step 2: check the two things you have to provide

A gym with working hoops, and one local person who is our contact for the two days. That is it. We bring the coaching team, the curriculum, a printed booklet for every child, and the clinic equipment.

If your space is unusual — a short floor, hoops that do not lower, a community hall rather than a gym — say so rather than assuming it rules you out. We have run clinics in every kind of space.

Step 3: request an estimate

We quote every community individually, because the honest cost depends on where you are: a day drive, a drive with an overnight, or a fly-in with freighted gear are three different trips.

What comes back is written and itemised: the coaching team for the full clinic, the curriculum, a booklet for every child, and all travel and logistics — vehicle and mileage or flights, accommodation, meals, insurance, equipment handling, and the coordination behind it. Anything you want added is quoted as its own line.

Step 4: bring the cost down where you can

Two levers, and communities use both regularly:

• Host the coaches. A school suite, a band-owned unit, billets, a hotel you have a rate with — tell us and the accommodation comes off the quote.
• Feed the team. If meals are easier for you to provide than to pay for, say so.

We would rather build the trip around what your community already has than bill you for it.

Step 5: the registration model, if you want it

Towns and communities often run the clinic as their own event. It works in four steps:

1. You host — your gym, your community, your dates.
2. You market it to local families. We give you the material to share.
3. You collect the registrations. The money comes to you directly. No middleman and no waiting.
4. We deliver the clinic. Our coaches arrive and run it.

For a lot of communities that turns a cost into something closer to break-even, and it fills the gym at the same time. The small-town version is here.

Step 6: the paperwork your organisation will ask for

Every travelling coach holds a current criminal record check and we carry liability insurance. If your school division, band office or council needs that on file before approving a visit, ask and we will send it. We follow the Rule of Two throughout — Safe Sport sets out how, and how to raise a concern.

Four things that make a clinic go well

• One clear local contact for the two days. Not a committee.
• Tell the families early. The gym fills on word of mouth, and word of mouth needs a couple of weeks.
• Be honest about numbers. Under-counting is the one thing that makes a clinic harder to run well.
• Say what you actually want. More days, a specific age group, a girls-only block — ask when you request the estimate and we will build it.

Start it

Request an estimate with your community, rough numbers and dates. If you are a First Nation, this page is the one to use; if you are a town, this one.