Minis Sessions

Minis Development Programme Lead Coach: Brian Kinch,
Contact via email on brkinch@hotmail.com

Minis Development Early Years Lead Coach: Marc Lacey
Contact via email on lacey_lovesit@yahoo.co.uk

Assistant Coach: Jade Kinch

Team Manager: Jaqueline Edwards
Contact via email on jaqu-edw@yahoo.co.uk

COB hold a Mini Basketball session for children aged from 4 -12 and years old. This is a great, fun introduction to basketball where the children learn fundamental skills with club coaches. The mini team compete in the locally run mini league.

Minis Training sessions:

Saturdays: 10am until 12pm

Venue: Nechells Community Sports Centre, Rupert Street, Nechells, Birmingham, B7 5DT

Additional Skills session Mondays: 6pm until 7pm

Venue: Nechells Community Sports Centre, Rupert Street, Nechells, Birmingham, B7 5DT

Citywide League Fixtures and results:

Mid-season report:

The development team has a mixture of ages and abilities. We have the Minis Development (age 5 - 11) led by Marc Lacey and then we have the rest, age 12 -16.
This report is focussed on the older group, but a key priniciple with the teams is to help each player reach their potential and not hold them back, so several of the minis have played in older age group games in the first half of the season.

Minis Development comments - The Minis have had a few games against Yardley, Baverstock and Bournville during the early part of the season. The core of the minis team are all under 9, supported by 2 older players who are under 11. The have played excellently during these games. The have a great focus on team defence and a desire to win the ball.

Skill session - In September, we started a 1hour skills session that has been very popular with the Minis. It is obvious that those who have attended this session have improved greatly. The greater understanding of the game and the better the execution of the fundamentals has been noticeable in training and in the games.

Older Development -

U13 - This team has at it heart, Henry, SK and Rhizwahn. The remainder of the team are Jameel and Lewis (both u11) and the following minis - Tyrece, Darius, Johannes, and Lewis.

The team have trained well and played matches against Baverstock and Handsworth. Considering the team is so young, they performed excellently against Baverstock in defeat, but turned on the defence to win against Handsworth, who are a considerably taller team.

U16 - Games against Handsworth, Redditch, Yardley. Again the team is made of of younger players you are under aged as a means of encouraging development. So Henry, SK, Rhizwahn, Jameel and Lewis are joined by Taha, Lamar (captain), Brad, Daniel, Ammar, Samad and Vishal. The Handsworth game was a friendly that was an encouraging win pre-season and highlighted many areas for improvement. The Yardley game was a better performance and a deserved win. The most pleasing game was the heavy defeat to a much older and experienced Redditch team. We tried to play good offence and defence and made it hard to Redditch.

The first half of the season has been a success. All of the player have improved. Overall, passing, ball handling, shooting, rebounding and real desire to be better at defence has set good foundations for the teams.

We now need to increase the involvement in the Skills session across all development players as this will surely help them all to grow further.

Saturday 17th December 2011
COB U13s v Handsworth Hurricanes U13s

COB once again was represented by a mixture of Under 11 players and 3 Under 13 as the core of the team. The Handsworth team were physically bigger than us, but the team were not put off by this at all.
During the first period COB missed a lot of layups and shots near to the basket, so we trailed 0-4. The second period we found a way to the basket and we scored regularly - baskets by Henry, SK, Jameel, Rhizwahn and Johannes. Our defence became more aggresive and we chased every loose ball. We started to win more rebounds, but failed to score off our offensive rebounding. However, we went into the half 10-6 up.
The 3rd period was a repeat of the first where we struggled to score again, but our defensive effort stopped Handsworth from scoring too. We finished the game off by keeping Handsworth to just 4 second half points, scoring 6 ourselves - SK, Jameel and Ty closing out the game.
Our under 11's played very well utilising the space and working hard to get open. The main positives were the aggressive defence and the spread of scoring. Everyone showed good improvement throughout the game.

Final Score - COB 16 Handsworth Hurricanes 10.

Saturday 10th December 2011 - Bournville came to visit.
At short notice we agreed to welcome the Bournville team into Nechells. They were unable to access their court so we arranged some friendly games.
COB Mini's V Bourvillle (Under 11)

A fast and exciting game to watch. COB won 30 - 20.

COB Development U16 V Bournville

Both teams uses this as an opportunity to play some younger player. All of the COB team were under U15. Many were in their first game for the club at this level.

The was a great opportunity to see what the players could do.

COB had a very slow start as Bournville quickly opened up a 10 point lead. COB rallied and started to play better defence and managed to play some interesting offence. Ammar made some good assists, Brad got too the hoop, Rhizwahn, Lewis played better defence and Samad, Vishal and SK showed very positive signs for the future.

Final Score - COB 14 Bournville 26

Next game - Saturday 17th December at Nechells. COB U13 V Handsworth U13.

COB Minis Season Tips off

The youngest group of player at the club are the Minis. The Minis are school year 6 and under (5 to 11 years old). They train during the Saturday morning session and they have also taken advantage of the skills development session on a Monday.

After a long period of preparation, the season gets underway in November. This season the team will follow the same format as last year - shorter court, lower baskets with a size 6 ball. The games will be triangular events against Yardley, Bournville and Baverstock