Over £2000 has been awarded to Thames Valley Kings Wheelchair Basketball Club during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
The Thames Valley Kings Wheelchair Basketball Club who are based in Berkshire has been awarded £2014 of National Lottery funding from Sport England’s Community emergency Fund towards purchase our own 24 seconds shot clocks (specialist basketball equipment) during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.
The outbreak of the virus and the consequent shutdown of businesses as of March 23 has left the sport and physical activity sector facing a period of uncertainty.
In response, on March 31st Sport England announced a £195m package to help the sport and physical activity sector through COVID-19. Within the package is a £20m Community Emergency Fund, of National Lottery money to deliver immediate funding to those who have a role in supporting the nation to be active but are experiencing short-term financial hardship or the ceasing of operations due to the impact of coronavirus.
The grant has enabled Thames Valley Kings to purchase their own 24 seconds shot clocks (specialist basketball equipment) which are required due to recent success on the court for the coming season. Kings had been deep into celebrating their 15th birthday and had run 6 of 15 planned events to fundraise for the club. They had lost the opportunity to complete the other 9 events to raise funds for the shot clocks and fundraising which was also projected to cover the cost of the insurance for the 25 club-owned sports wheelchairs and other running costs.
Jacqueline Scoins-Cass MBE, Chairperson, Thames Valley Kings said:
We are very grateful to the National Lottery and Sport England to provide the emergency funding when we were unable to fundraise as planned through our 15 events for our 15th Birthday; We had hoped to complete a Skydive this summer as we as a number of other events to fundraise. We don’t know when fundraising events will be able to re-start, this funding will help keep the club going. We are currently awaiting the Greenlight from our National Governing body – British Wheelchair Basketball – before we re-start training. We have been offering our club members support and ensuring those who live alone are contacted weekly to check in on them. We have held weekly online sessions covering a number of topics for our club members.
Tim Hollingsworth, Sport England’s Chief Executive, said:
As the body responsible for the growth of sport and physical activity participation, we want the vital grassroots organisations that make sport and physical activity happen in this country to not just to come through this crisis but to be in a position to thrive again in the future. The £20m Community Emergency fund, made possible by National Lottery players is part of a multimillion pound package of support we are providing to ease the pressure on a huge number of the organisations who are central to the nation’s health & wellbeing.
Thames Valley Kings are regular contributors to Kennet Radio Sport during the season, providing regular squad and score updates as well as a weekly Disability Sport report from Peter Scoins.
