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About Us

Hampshire Harriers Wheelchair Basketball Inclusive Sports Club inspires confidence, life skills and purpose  

 

We are a well-run, fully constituted charity founded in the 1980s. The Club’s home court base is Oasis Academy, Mayfield Southampton – with the team meeting twice weekly, on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings.

 

Harriers is an all-inclusive club which caters for all types of disabilities from people born with physical difference to those acquiring disability through injury or accident during the life course.  As an inclusive club Harriers also welcomes able bodied people into the team, enabling parents, children, friends and wider family irrespective of physical ability to play together, to laugh together, to form a wider friendship group together.

 

Club members range from 11-70+ years of age, and are trained by highly experienced Coaching staff which extensive region, national experience including players which have gone on to represent Great Britain in the Paralympics – including those in the GB squad to this day.

 

The Club fields two competitive teams who compete regionally and nationally in the British Wheelchair Basketball League – as well as in local derbies and friendly games organised outside the national league timetable.

 

As well as offering competitive sport opportunities, the Club also runs High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) during some of the sessions, targeting strengthening, flexion, stamina building exercises to build fitness, speed and chair agility – enabling all players to achieve fitness goals relevant to them, promoting both physical and mental wellbeing.

 

Harriers regularly has 20 people training and playing alongside their disabled and able-bodied friends and family every week – but Harriers is more than just a sports club.  It burns with a passion to motivate, challenge and inspire physically disabled children and adult, who are often marginalised as school and within the wider community, to be the best they can be – whether that’s being able to play a fast, team-based and at time, fiercely competitive sport or simply provide a space where players can kick-back and be themselves, forget their worries and forge lasting friendships.   The Club’s wider network of parents, carers and friends with lived experience also provides an informal peer support group, tackling social isolation and normalising life with difference.

 

The Club deliberately keeps playing fees low to maximise the accessibility of this amazing sport.  Players pay just £35 per month for 8-10 training/playing sessions across 4-5week months – with the balance of funds coming from community fundraising and business donations.

 

The club is particularly proud of our new sponsors Beyond Retail who have just provided Harriers with new home & away players kit for the new season 2023-2024 that looks absolutely amazing.

Our Mission

At HampshireHarriers, our mission is to promote wheelchair basketball and provide opportunities for athletes with disabilities to participate in the sport. We believe that basketball is for everyone, and we are committed to breaking down barriers and creating a welcoming and supportive community. Through our team's hard work and dedication, we hope to inspire others to get involved in wheelchair basketball and experience the thrill of the game.

Partners

Beyond Retail Ltd logo
British Wheelchair Basketball Association Logo
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