For Community Coaches and Leaders Driven to Impact their Local Clubs
Canterbury Basketball is excited to launch the Coach Development Scholarship, a new initiative designed to help clubs build sustainable coaching pathways within their own communities.
CBA’s coach development strategy has increasingly focused on more than simply delivering courses. We want to recruit, connect, support and retain coaches throughout their coaching journey, combining practical experience with ongoing learning and strong community connections.
The next step is taking that approach deeper into our clubs.
Each participating club will have the opportunity to identify a driven leader from within its community to receive a $2,000 annual Coach Development Scholarship.
The Scholar’s role will be to help their club build a strong and sustainable coaching system — recruiting new coaches, supporting existing coaches and creating meaningful development opportunities across both the club and its affiliated schools.
Scholars will work alongside CBA Head of Pathways Benjamin Constable and Development Officer Zach Hannen to establish a club-based coach development pathway that operates in parallel with CBA’s regional system.
The goal is simple: every basketball community should have a depth and breadth of coaches who are supported, connected and continually developing.
This builds directly on CBA’s longer-term direction of embedding coach development within clubs, making mentoring, observation, feedback and learning part of everyday coaching rather than relying solely on centrally delivered programmes.
This isn’t simply a scholarship to attend courses. Scholars will be expected to become leaders of coach development within their communities.
They will recruit players and other members of their club community to begin their coaching journey; connect and support new, junior and existing coaches; open their own practices so developing coaches can observe, participate and learn; and build relationships between coaches across their club and affiliated schools.
Scholars will also help establish regular coach development opportunities within their community, including practical training such as On-Point Activation, while connecting coaches into the wider opportunities available through CBA.
The intention is to create a genuine community of coaches — people who share ideas, observe one another, ask questions, learn together and feel connected beyond the team they happen to coach. CBA’s existing programmes have demonstrated the importance of these connections in helping coaches feel supported and part of something bigger than their individual team.
Successful applicants will be people who want to have a genuine impact on basketball in their community.
They will have strong standing within their basketball community, coaching experience, demonstrated leadership experience and/or leadership potential, and — most importantly — a willingness to continue developing themselves while investing in the development of others.
You don’t need to have all the answers. We are looking for people with the energy, relationships and commitment to build something within their club.
CBA will work alongside each Scholar and their club to help establish the structures, resources and development opportunities needed to make that happen.
Great community basketball depends on great community coaches.
But sustainable coaching communities don’t happen by accident. New coaches need opportunities to start. Developing coaches need people around them. Experienced coaches need opportunities to keep learning and, importantly, opportunities to help the next generation.
CBA already has a growing network of Coach Developers and sees expanding mentoring and leadership capacity across clubs and schools as an important part of making coach development sustainable.
The Coach Development Scholarship is about putting that capability directly into our clubs — developing leaders who can create strong coaching cultures that continue to grow year after year.
Applications for the 2027 Coach Development Scholarships are now open and close on 10 October 2026.
Shortlisted applicants will then be interviewed alongside representatives from their club and Canterbury Basketball.
Training will commence shortly after at CBA’s Coach Connection Forum and Signature League.
If you’re passionate about coaching, believe in developing people and want to have a lasting impact on basketball in your community, we want to hear from you.
