Court shortage leaves CBL sidelined yet again

DELAYS with the opening of the new basketball courts has led to Wangaratta not fielding sides in the men’s and women’s Country Basketball League competition. Despite hosting an NBL match in late August, the two new courts at the Wangaratta Sports and Aquatic Centre have still not been cleared for public use. With a bumper domestic program and junior representative teams already vying for a limited number of available courts, something had to give. Wangaratta Basketball Inc president Adam Maher said there were simply not enough available courts to facilitate running CBL sides. “The biggest problem was we couldn’t train, there’s literally not one hour of court space left because the new courts aren’t open, and they’re still going through the process there,” he said. “We haven’t got the court space to run the program. “We use the two courts we have at the stadium plus Galen’s two courts for a couple of timeslots, which means we’re playing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which impacts on training with the Junior Warriors,” he explained. “Our junior domestic (program) up until this week was taking almost every night of the week with training, but now domestic’s come back we’ve had to rejig our training sessions for our Junior Warriors and domestic. “If we were going to train for CBL, we might’ve been able to do it on a Thursday night at 9.30pm, which doesn’t work.” Maher said even when the new courts are officially opened and right to train and play on, he’d like to see even more courts in Wangaratta. “Wangaratta needs a minimum of another four courts for the town on top of the new ones,” he said. “Again this year we’re having to move our tournament in November to Wodonga, this is the third time in a row we’ve moved this particular program to Wodonga. “The tournament is supposed to inject money into the town, not only into basketball but the economy, and we’re going to move that to Wodonga because our courts aren’t open. “But even if they were open, we’d be going down to Benalla to use theirs or Myrtleford – when you go to Wodonga, they have nine courts within three minutes of each other. “If we had the court facilities in Wangaratta, it would be a much better thing for Wangaratta as a whole – businesses, accommodation, they’d thrive on the fact that we had more court facilities.” The Warriors last competed in the men’s competition in the summer of 2023, while it’s been almost two years since Wangaratta’s women were in the CBL. Maher said plans were in place to bring back CBL basketball to Wangaratta in the near future. “We will have CBL on the court next year, that’s an absolute,” he said. “The courts will be in a better place next year, we’re going to do some work with that whole program and how we bring it.”

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