The Kāpiti Basketball Association recently ran a two hour ‘coach the coaches clinic’ at the KCDC Sports hall at Paraparaumu College. Fifteen local basketball coaches attended to be inspired by famed Kiwi basketball coach Rewi Thompson.
Rewi is on vacation from his professional coaching job at Middle Township High School, New Jersey in the USA. He has over 25 years experience in the US college basketball scene and boy did it show.
He has the ability to motivate, inspire, and install instant respect with his high energy, passionate but simplistic methods of engaging. Giving up his time for free Rewi conducted a white board session built around four main theme’s; know your players; create balance in your practice sessions; create accountability; and train at tempo.
He was very complimentary of Kiwi kids saying that they were often very skilful and coachable he did say that the one area that lets them down was conditioning. He then took Coach Ephraim Magalogo Kāpiti Basketball Association’s U17 Boys Representative Team through a skills session to demonstrate his philosophies. It was very impressive and in a short space of time the U17’s ran through a series of drills, drills that the team quickly owned and perfected, but perfected under tempo.
The U17’s were blowing hard at the end of the session but they knew they had improved and they like the local coaches realised that it was a privilege to witness Coach Rewi in action. Coach Ephraim said ” Personally I learnt a lot from Coach Rewi and I know the boys loved the experience, the session will undoubtedly help us in trying to reach our goal of qualification for nationals this year.”
The qualifying tournament is being held over Queens Birthday weekend in Porirua. This Sunday 24 May the KBA U17 Boys Team will be playing in the Regional Tournament held by Wellington Basketball Association at the ASB Arena in Kilbirnie..
KBA’s head coach Angelo Robinson who arranged the session to help develop the local basketball coaching pool was extremely pleased with the high attendance at the clinic and the feedback he has received. There is no doubt that the sport of Basketball is growing on the Kāpiti Coast and so a special thanks to Coach Rewi for helping inspire coaches to continue to give back to the sport they love.
From: Rob Scriven
KBA Chairman
