PENHOLD – Basketball season is upon us and Penhold is getting in on the action.
The Penhold Fitness Centre has organized a new adult basketball league that began Sept. 22 and will run every Saturday at the Penhold Regional Multiplex.
“One of the fitness employees (Trevor) has quite a few friends that play (basketball) in other leagues and he also plays himself. He asked if we could develop a league here,” said Hayley Watmough, fitness centre supervisor. “It was a good idea so we ran with it.”
The league is open to men and women 18 years and older, and will consist of two divisions. A junior division will include players 18 to 35 years and a senior division will include basketball players 36 years of age and up.
It will run for about 10 to 12 weeks, noted Watmough, adding there will also be playoffs and a championship series.
“It starts September 22 and the regular season goes until December 8. Then we’ll have two playoff weekends on December 15 and December 22,” said Watmough earlier this month.
Since registration began, there has been a lot of interest in the basketball league, she added, with several teams registering for both divisions.
“We have seven teams in the juniors and 10 teams in the seniors,” she said. “We were expecting to have (about) eight teams in total (in both divisions).”
Watmough attributes the large number of teams and high interest to local basketball fans, particularly those of Filipino heritage. In the Philippines the sport is said to be vastly popular.
“They wanted a space where they could play. The league is open to anybody, but these are the teams that came to us and we’re happy to have them.”
League games will be held every Saturday starting at 11 a.m. and will run every hour until 6 p.m.
“They’ll play two 20-minute halves. The first half will be run time and the second half will be a mix of run time and stop time,” explained Watmough. ”There will also be time for a little warm-up and a break in between and time to clean up at the end of the day.”
Registration is now closed for the fall session, but the league could return in the new year.
“If it goes well, we’ll look at doing it again from January to April,” Watmough concluded.
For more information visit the Penhold Fitness Centre Facebook page.
