Basketball History Jump to WEBBA History
Basketball was invented in the United States at what is now Springfield College, Massachusetts. At the time Springfield College was the International YMCA Training School and the game was first introduced to a class of trainee YMCA Leaders.
At the time there was a need for a gymnasium activity to offset the flagging interest in apparatus work and freestanding exercise used during the winter months. Canadian Dr. James Naismith, one of the staff at the college, in an effort to make his classes more appealing, introduced various recreational games, such as Association Football, American Football and Lacrosse but each game presented a problem in the confined space of the 65" x 45"(20m x 14m) Springfield YMCA gymnasium. Naismith gave this problem a considerable amount of thought and decided that the solution lay in taking different factors from known games and combining them to produce a new game. The main features of the game invented by Naismith were: a team game a ball handling game without the use of any implement the ball was easy to handle, round, light and difficult to conceal a game played indoors no tackling to offset the no tackling, players were not permitted to run with the ball skill required to score, therefore, the target was placed above head height equal opportunity for each team game that demanded skill rather than strength to succeed game easy to learn a game anybody could play The first game of Basketball was played in mid-December 1891 at the YMCA gymnasium in Springfield. The goals for this game were peach baskets fixed to the balcony at each end of the gymnasium. Naismith, with a Physical Education Class of 18 members, tried out the game so first game was between two teams of nine a side. WEBBA - West of England Basketball Association
In the 1950s the Bristol Basketball League was formed and in its early days consisted of just four or five teams. These seem to have included Schoolmasters, St Mary Redcliffe (not the Redcliffe club currently playing), and a team called Iskra, the Spark, drawn from the Polish community which developed in Bristol during and after the Second World War. Other teams joined including KBI which was set up in 1957. Further expansion saw the inclusion of teams from further afield such as Newport and RAF Locking.
As the League grew to include teams from outside Bristol, the Bristol Basketball League was transformed into the West of England Basketball Association in the early 1960s. One of its major objectives, as defined in its constitution and as recognized by the English Basketball Association, (now styled England Basketball) is
To act as the controlling body in the area defined by EB as the West of England Area.
Since then WEBBA has had the dual functions of acting as this controlling body and organizing local competitive basketball. These functions have been largely intertwined, although some disentanglement has taken place in recent years.
By the 1970s, the men's league had grown to three divisions and now normally comprises about 30 teams. A women's league has been formed with two divisions at one time, though currently there is only one. Participating teams come (or have come) from a wide area – Swindon to the East, Yeovil and Taunton to the South, Cardiff to the West and Cheltenham to the North. In addition to the leagues, WEBBA organizes cup, plate and trophy competitions and runs courses for coaches, referees and table officials at intervals.
In addition to KBI and Newport, other clubs which have played in WEBBA competitions for 30 years or more include Aces, Worle, Empees, Lockleaze (beginning as Bristol Celtics and playing as Tropic for a couple of years), Olympiad, Totterdown and Bristol University. KBI has undoubtedly been the most consistently successful club (though it has sometimes played as Yate Windows and Gardiner Haskins), having been Division 1 champions on 14 occasions and Cup winners 19 times.
In the last eight years National League basketball has come regularly to the area, starting with Bristol Bombers which migrated around various venues in Bristol before moving to Bath University and becoming Team Bath Romans. Bath lasted until the end of the 2005-6 season, never really having survived the move east. By that time, a renewed Bristol Bombers had been established in Bristol, becoming Flyers after the events of 7/7. The team moved to WISE when it opened and now plays as Bristol Academy Flyers in NL Division 1. Both the Bath and Bristol teams have included many local players who have continued to represent clubs which play in WEBBA, bringing a sharper edge to many WEBBA Division 1 games and contributing to the development of basketball in the Are. WEBBA has enjoyed cordial relations and cooperation with both of these clubs.
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