Nelson Giants captain, Sam Dempster, delivered a slam dunk coaching session to more than 100 Murchison Area School students last week.
The event, which tipped off at Murchison Recreation Centre on Thursday 14 September, aimed to give the school students a shot at basketball skills.
Centre assistant manager, Julia Sara, says the day was “really fantastic” with about 120 students aged between five and 15 hooping the opportunity under the guidance of Sam and Tasman District Council facilities manager and former Nelson Giant, Tony Strange.
“We have quite a few casual basketballers within our community but there’s no one here to coach, so we just really wanted to give them some form of coaching or training to start filling that need,” she says.
“We had five to eight-year-olds who were just dribbling and learning about left and right and the older kids were more interested in shooting hoops.
“Even our more unwilling kids got involved and had a great time… huge thanks from us for [Sam and Tony] to be willing to come down and share their skills with us.”
Sam says it was an “awesome day” bouncing on his knowledge.
“Murch was awesome, and to see what smaller communities are really like. I think I ended up playing in all of the games,” he says.
“It’s pretty special to go out to these places, and you can see how special it is for them.”
