City of Portsmouth College and Portsmouth Force announce new Level 3 BTEC Elite Basketball course

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00:00What we've started is quite a unique opportunity for kids in Portsmouth that want to get themselves

00:09interested in basketball and take that to the next level and do it at college. So we

00:12are bringing in next year the Elite Basketball Programme, which will be based out of the

00:17hybrid campus here, which gives students an opportunity to combine their academics with

00:24their playing abilities in basketball. So the course will be split 50-50, you'll have

00:3010 hours of basketball delivery and 10 hours of basketball course delivery, so a little

00:35bit more academic with some sports science, nutrition, anatomy and physiology, but everything

00:41will be linked around basketball.

00:43Obviously it's not the sort of course that you've run before, so you've got a similar

00:49football course?

00:50Yeah, so we run the Elite Football Course, which has been hugely successful with hundreds

00:53of kids coming through the programme over the years, and there was just a gap in the

00:57market really for a basketball provision which supports the development of basketball players

01:02to be able to create a career for them in basketball. Obviously one of the biggest things

01:08is it's still the equivalent of 3A level, so students can still go to university with

01:13the outcome of the course, but there's a lot of opportunities around coaching, playing

01:18analysis and to create other jobs.

01:21We've got the Open Evening on Wednesday and Thursday this week, where you can come and

01:27speak to us as lecturers and the people that run the sports courses. So to find out a little

01:32bit more about the basketball course in itself, in addition we're running the Taser event

01:37on Tuesday 27th October, where any Year 11 players can come in and find out a little

01:42bit more about it.

01:43A few years ago Rob, who set up Portsmouth Force, came to us and said he wanted to create

01:48a pathway which enabled students to have an opportunity to progress into the Force team

01:54at the men's level. We've always supported the junior side, so we've been in partnership

01:59with them for a number of years, working with kids aged 4 to 18 and then having a pathway

02:04to the college, but now the pathway is a little bit more structured in the fact of now that

02:10you can progress straight into a basketball qualification that's being run here and it

02:14is completely unique. The only other course like this is at Itching in Southampton, so

02:19to have something like this in the city, I do not wait to buy a football team in Portsmouth.

02:25So we've got Portsmouth Force, we've got a national team in Division 3. How important

02:32is it to the club to have this type of course and this type of partnership with the college?

02:36I think it's really important. I think we're at a really crucial kind of time to try and

02:41represent Portsmouth basketball outside of Portsmouth. I see a lot of basketball players

02:45from around the country, so it's now great that we can have our own identity. So again,

02:50anyone who's potentially knocking on the door of making a playing career for themselves

02:54who originate from Portsmouth, you have to send them elsewhere. So now we have the opportunity

02:59to train them in-house. But again, it's not just about a playing career. Through the course

03:03there are other avenues. We're trying to teach these young guys how to find a man and how

03:08to look for jobs, etc. If basketball is the thing that they love, there are other careers of it.