Orange District Basketball Association has joined the ranks of returning sports as committee members marked Monday July 20 as the commencement of its winter competition.
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The confirmation comes in the wake of the NSW Government's Tuesday ruling to permit all-age community sports from July 1 onwards, a highly sought after announcement for all senior sporting clubs at Orange.
ODBA president Gerard Power said there was an option to kick things off at the start of July but the group decided to hold it off a few weeks longer.
"We had our meeting on Thursday night and there is an opportunity to start on July 1 but we wanted to wait until the school holidays were over," Power said.
"The goal for us is just to give people a short, ten-week season to get them back on board."
The planned season won't a have finals series and is set to feature a long list of COVIDsafe rules but Power says his committee has been receiving information from the government for months and is well-equipped to govern the new list of restrictions.
"Thanks to Basketball Australia and the NSW government we've been getting all the instructions we need," he said.
"We're very much educated in how to provide the right environment when we open back up. We've had our fingers on the pulse of all the updates rolling through."
Not only will the season be shorted, but the team are expected to be smaller as Power indicated there's a chance sides will only be allowed to have two reserves on the bench as opposed to the more common five-person subs list.
"We just can't have large teams," he said.
"We want to give everyone an opportunity to play but we need to have small teams there and they need to have a 'come, play and leave' mentality."
Some of the COVIDSafe measure will include: sanitising balls throughout and after every game, eliminating handshaking contact between teammates, ensuring all players leave as soon as their games have concluded and ensuring sanitiser/appropriate cleaning products are readily available for everyone.
While the reduction of playing numbers on each team isn't ideal, Power's hoping that the inclusion of a Sunday afternoon mixed competition will be a hit among players.
"We just want to get back on the court and give them an opportunity to play a short season before we ramp things back up again in the summer," he said. "For now, we've got to make sure we're educating everybody on the new rules so we can reopen safely."
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