Nick Westby: Basketball driving forward as legacy of London bears fruit

We were all impressed by the feats of Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah in the Olympic Stadium and Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton in the velodrome.

But how moved were we by our representatives in basketball, volleyball, water polo and handball?

During London 2012, that quartet of sports enjoyed the most exposure they have ever received in this country.

Competing for medals was beyond the question – indeed only the men’s basketball team and the women’s volleyballers won a single game – so it was all about spreading the gospel and getting more people involved.

In an effort to see how well those sports have fared in that very mission, I canvassed the opinion of people representing each sport from a cross-section of professional clubs and amateur associations, from the south of Yorkshire, all the way over to the east coast.

What I discovered varied from sport to sport, with basketball and handball the clear winners in the sheer recruitment of numbers.

While water polo and volleyball saw an improvement in take-up, it was perhaps not as much as expected.

Each sport will learn what funding they will receive from UK Sport for the next Olympic cycle at the end of this year, a decision from the governing body which promises to be a defining moment in the progression of each of these sports.

The knock-on effect of funding at the top of these sports will only enhance their chances of offering the people they do attract a solid structure in which to progress.

Taking basketball first, a sport that is huge in America and growing in mainland Europe was always going to have a large catchment of interest in the people who paid to watch games at the Olympic Park or who saw it on television.

The Sheffield Sharks are the county’s flagship club and their marketing manager Joel Mills reports that, so far, the legacy of London 2012 is bearing fruit.

Mills said: “In the few days after the Olympics we took a number of calls from people asking where they could play basketball, how do I get involved etc.

“There’s been an influx of kids taking up basketball because of what they saw at the Games.

“And the next 12 months will be big for the sport in this country with the EuroBasket finals coming to the O2 Arena next year in London. That’s the equivalent of the Champions League final, which will be another great advert for the sport.

“For a while now our junior clubs have been attracting kids from across Yorkshire, from all the way out at Hull and York, and the Olympics has only heightened that interest. From that we hope to develop more age group levels. Ultimately we want more quality British youngsters playing in the BBL.”

Handball considers itself to be a fast-growing sport in the United Kingdom with ‘thousands of people inspired to take it up in the wake of London 2012’, according to the British Handball website. A quick call to the Leeds Metropolitan University handball team confirmed that at local level, the interest is significant.

Nick Gore of Leeds Met said: “We have been inundated by existing students, new students and members of the public all expressing an interest in playing.

“That was in the immediate wake of the Olympics so we have set up a taster session on the weekend of September 14 and 15, (12pm-4pm each day) at the Headingley Campus.

“We had to be pro-active with this and it will be a good time to see if the interest is still there four or five weeks after the actual Olympics.”

The British water polo squads produced no victories at London 2012, but the sport was one of the most exciting of the Games.

People have not been flooding in to take up the sport, but there has been international recognition of what the women in particular managed at the Games, and interest at local level.

Norman Leighton, the founder of the successful Rotherham Metro club and father of GB women’s captain Fran Leighton, said: “With the summer holidays it’s normally quiet but for last Wednesday’s training session there were an extra four people who had come to find out about how they could join in. They had seen it at the Olympics, probably through all the local interest, and by word of mouth had come to see what it was all about.”

On the funding, Leighton added: “If there is to be a future for the sport in this country it’s imperative that we do see some funding. Encouragingly, though, the women have received an invite from FINA to attend the world championships next year, on the back of what they accomplished in the Olympics.

“That’s a massive boost for the sport.”

If there is a sport that is struggling to cash in on the promise of London 2012, it is volleyball. Craig English, treasurer of the Hull and East Yorkshire Volleyball Association, reports: “We’ve had some interest, but not on the scale of what we would have hoped. On an average it’s probably three-to-four new players per club. We thought we would be on the verge of take-off.

“But the interest has already begun to die down. What success we have had is in playing volleyball in the parks around the area, that seems to have been our best way of generating new interest from the public.

“From a beach volleyball perspective, there are courts all over the coastline of East Yorkshire, with two in Bridlington, so that is really doing well.

“What indoor volleyball needs is more development officers going into schools spreading the word. That’s what we lack.”