Hi everyone,

I would like to start with International Women’s Day that occurred on 8^th March.

We are very lucky to have many strong, passionate and dedicated women as part of the Runcorn Rockets especially Kelly Mansell, Nazeera Khatree, Emma Hepehi and Janette Onorio. There are so many other wonderful mums that interact with us at Rockets and I would like to say a huge thank you to all the mums in the club, because without you the kids would not be at training, at games, remember their water bottles and the list goes on and on, so thank you.

Watching the games on the week-end, & seeing all the smiling and excited faces reconfirms how wonderful our lives are, but there are many things we have to be mindful of such as walking across the street. Walking across the street can be very dangerous but I still do it, I use good judgement by ensuring I look left and right and then left again and walk briskly. If we take normal precautions with things that we do life is great and we need not be afraid.

Government is keeping us informed of the COVID 19 situation in Australia and what we should do and how to interact with each other. We shall follow government advice & ensure that we keep all members safe. Up to now we do not have a static audience of more than 500 people so we are expecting at this point in time that there will be no restrictions on our local competition.

On another note, not sure if you noticed but all the backboards at the school stadium have been done this week. They are all not quite finished, there is one more little thing to go on one of the backboards so we can lift it up and down. This was done when we could not use the hall because of the rain on Monday so we would like to thank the school for this as I know it was a considerable amount of money to do this.

Because of the number of teams we currently have, there has been some juggling around of training times. Once Representative Basketball finishes for some older age groups we will be able to move a couple of teams around to get more space – we have spoken to those coaches affected & they are comfortable with the move.

Things that you may not be aware of - there were some rule changes that occurred this season I thought may affect some of you; all competition rules are available on the Southwest web site if you are interested.

A quick summary and an example is - if your child has played 6 games in the Purple division they can no longer play in Red. Once someone has played 6 games in any division they cannot play in a lower division again that season. Some of the players may be coming to that point in time now. If you are asked to play in a lower division, please mention this to the coach as the club gets fined if this occurs.

While we are on this topic of rules - no player can play in two different teams in the same division. This especially relates to the age groups that play finals so U12 upwards. If you are ever unsure of a rule, please ask the coach and he can get it clarified for you – rules do change to meet our changing environment so sometimes it is difficult to keep up with them.

We have also started planning for next season and as we get closer to the end of the season, we will tell you what we have planned.

From the courts

Mark Smith

President Runcorn Rockets Basketball