In this episode of All Things Business – The Podcast, Ben speaks to Peter Taylor, Chairman at the MK Breakers Basketball Club.
The club’s meteoric rise has been the pride of the city, with the club winning national championships and their senior team achieving back-to-back promotions up basketball’s pyramid.
Slam-dunking out of retirement
Peter has a long history with the sport and has been involved in it for over 50 years, including coaching women’s basketball in the ‘80s and taking teams to Wembley twice. After spending some time in America while his sons completed golf scholarships, Peter and his wife Allison returned to the UK in 2012 with the intention of retiring. However, Peter quickly became dissatisfied with retired life and decided to get back into basketball coaching.
Within a month of restarting his basketball coaching career, he had been asked to take over the whole of his new club, the Shenley Scorpions. While playing was always a passion, he enjoys the strategic elements of coaching and managing clubs too.
Milton Keynes’ populace is very young and vibrant, he explains, so finding players has never been an issue. By lockdown, the club had around 400 players involved with it. After lockdown, that number quickly grew to over 1000.
The pent-up demand for sporting activity had led to an explosive period of growth from ages 4-19, plus their senior teams. By basing themselves out of various venues across the county, ensuring players of all ages were able to walk and cycle to training sessions, the club has made itself unprecedentedly accessible and now runs sessions seven days a week.
Shooting for the next generation
The club’s success and focus on training and youth groups has led to huge success for some of their alumni. Most notably, Jeremy Sochan now plays for the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA after a successful college basketball career with Baylor University. Two more alumni currently have full university scholarships, eight have played for England and two play for Great Britain.
At first, Peter explains, MK Breakers’ goals were to offer as many children as possible the opportunity to play basketball at local and elite levels, and to make Milton Keynes a destination for basketball in the UK. The first goal should beget the second, and Peter feels they are well on the way to achieving both. By total number of players, they are now the second largest in the UK, behind only the much older and established Newcastle.
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