A Message From The GBA

Hello Goulbourn Basketball Families
 
I wanted to take a moment to update you on the developments in our planning for basketball activities this season.  As one would expect, things have been unsettled and rather fluid as we try to prepare for our 2020/2021 year.  Our Executive team has met a few times over the summer and has developed a few different strategies with how we wanted to proceed for this season.  However, each of these strategies are contingent on getting access to gymnasiums and the directives from Ottawa Public Health, Government of Ontario, Canada Basketball and Ontario Basketball Association. 
Our governing bodies have indicated that basketball clubs can begin to train athletes, but no competition is permissible at this point.  This means that any basketball activity would be developmental and respect physical distancing guidelines.  There would be limited numbers of athletes and coaches in a facility at a time and athletes are to use their own balls etc.  With this information, our Executive was planning to organize a fall session of training and development as we wait for things to progress towards more competition and so on.  
This planning, however, has been halted by the fact that we are unable to secure gym space to allow us to run our sessions.  Recently, the school boards have suspended club access to their gyms for the foreseeable future.  Some have indicated that they will permit bookings for the fall but there is no access at this point and there are no timelines for giving access.  Other boards have indicated that there will be no access granted until December at the earliest and that may possibly be extended beyond December if need be.   
As a result of all of this, the GBA will not be offering any fall programming until we can do so safely (ie follow all directives from the governing bodies) and we have access to facilities to allow us to run programming.  At this point, our plan is to run some basketball activities in January 2021 provided we have access to gyms and the situation with regards to COVID 19 has not regressed at all.  It is possible that the 2020/2021 season may not happen, but we remain hopeful and prepared to do whatever we can to have some basketball this season.  Should things change before December and we find ourselves in a position to offer some form of basketball (training, tryouts, league play or what have you) then we will definitely reach out again and get the ball rolling! 
We remain hopeful that we will be able to bring our programming back safely, at some point! In the meantime, I encourage you to continue to work on your skills and conditioning through our weekly Tips and Drills! 
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at:gbapresident613@gmail.com and I will do my best to address them. 
Thank you for being a part of the GBA family and we look forward to having our players and their families back as soon as it is safe to do so!
 
Sincerely,
 
Dan Case 
President
Goulbourn Basketball Association