Westland Stars is a basketball organization located in ‘s-Gravenzande, and was founded around 42 years ago.
Having fun
Karsten de Gier is the current chairman of Westland Stars. His goals and ambitions are quite obvious. “We want to build a platform within our organization where having fun and progressive results go hand in hand. We aren’t all born with the same level of talent, so that shouldn’t matter within Westland Stars. Having fun must be the fundamentals here. Besides that, we also want to create a fundamental for our results.”
“Our commission often finds solutions for those kinds of dilemmas. We have worked with a lot of mix teams with boys and girls in the past couple of years, and we are very proud to announce that our men’s under 14 team will compete in the competition again!” As you can see, Westland Stars has several teams within different categories. “That’s right,” De Gier confirms. “We have over 5 senior teams and 5 teams of our youth. Every other weekend we have the Little Stars. Children between the ages of 3 and 7 can play basketball with us.”
The increase of our members
Westland Stars, an organization that was founded more than 40 years ago. That’s not what many basketball clubs in the Netherlands can say. Still, what makes the existence of Westland Stars possible? “We all have made it possible. As an organization, everyone should give a little contribute to keep Westland Stars alive. That doesn’t mean it was always easy for us. During the economic crisis in 2008, we had a lot of trouble of finding sponsors.”
A lot of members even left the club, but now that those times are passed (and thanks to our new sponsors), we are a steady organization again. Some of our trainers gave our youth teams an innovative impulse by training with so many enthusiasm and passion. Combined with the Little Stars and our clinics, we see a big increase of the amount of our members. In the past 10 years, our club has decreased until a dept of 80 members. In the last 3 years, we grew to an amount of 110 members.”
Long- and short-term goals and second home
For an organization with that much history, it should be normal that some special moments have passed. And what kind of goals do the Westland Stars have? “Now that we don’t have an under 20 and under 22 team, only a few members of our talented players can move to the highest team. We got to stay realistic. Our strategic goal is to increase the amount of our youth members, so we can build on a better future, and maybe better results.”
Chairman Karsten de Gier has one important message to everyone who loves basketball and other kinds of sports. “Westland Stars is a nice and cozy organization where love to welcome everyone who likes to visit us. Come and visit a game someday, and be part of our family!”
