Southland Sport
A three-on-three basketball tournament has been designed by teenagers for teenagers to help provide a new opportunity for students to get active.
The tournament is being run by sport and recreation students from Southland Community College using funding from the Sport Southland-administered KiwiSport.
Sport Southland community sport advisor Kenji Sawada said as students at the community college fell outside the traditional education system, they often miss out on the opportunity to join school sports teams or clubs. This created a barrier for the students to participate in organised sports, particularly as the college did not have enough participants to furnish teams.
Coming up with solutions for removing barriers such as this, and others including lack of transport, was how the basketball tournament was created, Sawada said.
“Many of the community college sport and rec kids are quite into sport, so really wanted opportunities to play. They figured there were probably other teenagers out there that wanted to play too, but had a barrier, such as no transport, or just no opportunity, so they thought ‘how can we address this so that we’ve got something to do and those other teenagers have an opportunity to take part too’.”
Community College Sport and Recreation student Sean Hodgkinson-Stewart said getting active and having fun was important to the class, but they also wanted to create more physical activity opportunities for themselves and their friends.
“Since we are not in school, we don’t really have that much opportunity (to play sport).”
The 3×3 tournament will begin this Saturday at midday at the South Alive basketball court. A second session will be held the following Saturday at Dunbeath Crescent playground. On Saturday 9th November the grand finale of the competition will be held at Wachner Place.
A free barbecue will be available on all days, and other fun activities were also planned.
Everyone was welcome.
The students had not only devised the event, they had also done the marketing, worked out the activities they wanted to include, and worked with Sport Southland on how to make it happen.
“They have really taken ownership and driven this event themselves, which is fantastic,” Sawada said.