?Rossendale Basketball Club are the newest Sport England - England Basketball Clubmark club. The Clubmark award is aimed at junior clubs and indicates that the club provides a safe and open environment for their young participants and do a good job of developing players, coaches, officials and basketball in general. Rossendale is not a National League club, but enter local competitions for all of their age groups. The club's chairman Ken Masser stated; "Rossendale Basketball Club was founded in 1962 by a group mainly consisting of ex-school friends but has evolved dramatically over its 48 year history and is now building strong foundations to ensure it celebrates its 50th Anniversary stronger and more successful than ever.

In 2001 the club realised that in order to safeguard its future, it would need to expand the junior section. The youth structure was quickly up and running and now caters for an ever growing number of boys and girls aged between 9 and 18. With new sponsors World Options, a locally based international courier agent, and Castings Services Group, assisting the club financially, we have continued to develop and now have professional basketball coaches working in local schools for the first time. The club is hosting regular school tournaments and the local community is taking a much bigger interest in basketball.

A great year came to a great end when we were delighted to receive Clubmark accreditation which is testament to the hard work put in by many volunteers at the Club. We would not have been able to achieve the Clubmark award without the fantastic assistance we received from our local basketball development officer Adam Cowperthwaite and Club Development Officer Katie Miller from Rossendale Leisure Trust.

http://www.englandbasketball.co.uk/news/default.aspx?newsid=3120