FAQ

Factory of Champions

1. How do you encourage more people to participate in the sport of basketball?

We encourage mass participation through our “open for all” policy where we target ages 5-16year olds of all abilities, whether a complete novice to the elite level. We also have secured an extremely reasonable and competitive price with GLL enabling affordability for a very wide audience.

2. How do you help people to improve their skills and their level of sporting performance?

FOC concentrates on teaching the fundamentals of basketball in a fun and exciting way. We are able to monitor every individuals progress through our “Log Book” system which acts as a checklist to record skills that have been completed. This system has been very successful for player pathway enabling individuals to progress between ability groups ensuring “progression”. We also work with National League teams acting as a feeder club to encourage our participants to join elite clubs at U12, U14, U16 and U18 level.

3. How do you encourage people from groups who sometimes do not participate in basketball?

We encourage these groups in two ways:

• By allowing a trial session to encourage initial participation to allow the individual a feel for the sport and session content. This is very successful as the majority of these participants continue to join the programme.

• Our “open for all” policy allows these participants to acknowledge that they are welcome where similar individuals will be present. Our most subscribed level group has been “Beginners” throughout the programme which shows we have been successful in getting new people involved into basketball.

4. How does the club use innovative ideas to promote, develop or enhance its programme?

Our organisation ensure that our coaches always teach in a fun and exciting way to promote the sport in a positive way. We have also introduced incentives of prizes supplied by companies, such as Nike, NBA and The Chicago Rib Shack as well as Player of The Week certificates. The certificate is given to an individual that has excelled in attitude, work effort and skill level. Recently we also introduced “Game Night” which involves inviting other clubs to compete against the kids in our programme to add excitement, competition and sense of achievement. Parents, Guardians, Family and Friends are invited to increase the importance and excitement, where due to the success this has now been planned to occur once a month.

5. How does the club link with other organisations and does it link with schools?

We are linked with England Basketball, Bromley Schools Partnership, Croydon’s basketball school league, and School Home Support enabling us to reach out to a wide audience. The introduction of ‘Game Night’ involves inviting other clubs to participate in a competition once a month which has been hugley successful. We also have a great relationship with St Mary’s School in Croydon (Luol Deng’s UK school) where we provide free coaching to their pupils as well as run an elite programme out of three times a week.

Is Luol Deng on Twitter or Facebook?

Yes he is. Please go to twitter.com/LuolDeng9 and facebook.com/LuolDeng.

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