BARRHEAD-About 100 Barrhead Elementary School Grade 2 and 3 students will have a chance to learn the fundamentals of basketball thanks to a new afterschool program.
Barrhead Composite High School (BCHS) teachers Colin Erickson and Warren Warehime created the after school program.
"We both have kids that age, and we wanted to allow them to do something between hockey and baseball," Erickson said, adding the program will run weekly on Mondays for about the next month or so.
The first session was on April 4.
Registration for the program is $10, which goes towards buying a gift for each player. If any money is left over, they will donate it to the BCHS junior high school basketball program, in which both Erickson and Warehime are coaches.
Erickson said that initially, they were unsure how successful they would be.
"If we got 30 kids, we thought that would be a good turnout," he added.
However, after two days of letting students and parents know about the program, they had close to 90 kids.
Unfortunately, due to the popularity of the program, Erickson said they had to turn away some kids, which was never their intention.
"We easily could have gotten well over 100. I even had parents reach out from surrounding communities," he said, adding that as a matter of logistics they decided from the start to limit the program to BES students.
Due to the program's success, they also enlisted the help of fellow BCHS teacher and junior basketball coach Heath Klein along with nine high school students.
Erickson noted that if the program is successful, meaning it goes without too many hitches, he anticipates that they will hold it again.
But next time, he said, they might have to expand the program, holding two separate weekly sessions to meet demand.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com