Basketball & Character Clinics for First Nations

Two full days in your gym. Each day mixes real skill work — shooting, ball handling, finishing, defending — with games and scrimmages the kids can immediately use what they learned in, plus fitness circuits and our Confidence, Leadership & Basketball IQ sessions. It is deliberately not two days of drills in lines. Kids are moving, playing and being coached by name the whole time, and the leadership and character work is built into the days rather than bolted on at the end.

The two days run on HoopLife's written coaching library — the same system behind everything we run at our Regina facility, where we coach hundreds of players a week. Practice plans organized around four training themes (off-ball movement, defence and communication, creating advantages, and shooting), every drill diagrammed, and every coach trained on the same playbook and the same basketball vocabulary. The clinic is built from that library for the ages and abilities in front of us, and the printed booklet every child keeps comes from the same material.

The standard is two full days, which is what most communities book. It is long enough for the kids to actually improve at something and for our coaches to build a relationship with them, rather than being strangers who showed up for an afternoon. We can build a longer visit if you want one — tell us what you have in mind when you request an estimate and we will price it out.

We quote every community individually, because the honest answer depends on where you are. Driving distance, whether the team stays overnight, whether we fly in, how many days you want and how many coaches you need all move the number, and a same-day drive from Regina and a fly-in to a northern community are not remotely the same trip. So rather than publish a price that would be wrong for most of the people reading it, we build you a real quote. Request an estimate and we will send you a written one with every line itemised.

Most Nations fund a clinic out of an existing budget — education, recreation, health and wellness, or youth programming — and some pull several together to cover a visit. We invoice the Nation directly and the estimate is written so it can go straight to whoever approves spending, with every line itemised rather than a single lump sum. If it would help to have the quote broken out a particular way for your approval process, tell us and we will format it that way.

Three: one Senior Elite Skills Coach and two Elite Skills Coaches. The senior coach runs the clinic and is the person your coordinator deals with on the ground. If your group is unusually large we can send more, which does change the quote, so tell us roughly how many kids you expect.

There is no hard cap — we scale the clinic to your community rather than asking your community to fit our clinic. What helps is knowing the number in advance, because it tells us how many coaches to bring and how many booklets to print. A rough count when you request an estimate is enough.

We take who comes. In a lot of communities that means most of the school, so we group by age and ability on the day and run the sessions around the group we actually have in front of us. Tell us the age spread you expect and we will plan for it.

No, and most do not. A good share of the kids at any clinic have never had real coaching before, and those are often the ones the two days change the most. We group by ability so a beginner is not stuck behind a kid who has played for years, and nobody sits out.

A gym with working hoops, and someone local who is our point of contact for the two days. That is genuinely it. We bring the coaches, the curriculum, the booklets and the clinic equipment. If your floor is short, your hoops do not lower, or you are working with a community hall rather than a full gym, tell us — we have run clinics in every kind of space and we will build around yours rather than turning you down.

Your estimate covers the coaching team for the full clinic, the curriculum, a printed training booklet for every child, and all of our travel and logistics to get the team to you and home again — vehicle and mileage or flights, accommodation, meals, insurance, equipment handling and the coordination behind it. It is itemised, so you can see exactly what each part is. Anything you want added on top can be quoted as its own line.

Yes, and communities do this all the time. If you can put the coaching team up — a school suite, a band-owned unit, billets, a local hotel you have a rate with — tell us when you request an estimate and the accommodation comes off your quote. If feeding the team is easier for you than paying for meals, say that too. We would rather build the trip around what your community already has than bill you for it.

Yes. We have run clinics in 122 communities across 10 provinces and territories, and we have flown into remote and fly-in communities to do it. A trip is built one of three ways: a day trip where we drive up and back, a longer drive where the team stays overnight, or a fly-in where we book flights and freight the clinic gear. Distance changes the quote, it does not change whether we will come.

Yes to both. Every HoopLife coach who travels holds a current criminal record check, and we carry liability insurance for the clinic. If your school division, band office or council needs that paperwork on file before a visit can be approved, ask us and we will send it over — we know it is usually a requirement, not a nicety.

We follow the Rule of Two: wherever possible two responsible adults are present with any participant, so no coach is ever alone with a child. Our Safe Sport page sets out how that works and how to report a concern, including the Sask Sport Safe Sport Hotline. We would rather you read it before you book than after.

Basketball is how we get in the door. The part communities tell us about afterwards is the character and leadership work: our Confidence, Leadership & Basketball IQ sessions, which teach young people that the opinion of themselves that matters most is their own, and how to carry that back into their school and their community. Coordinators consistently tell us the biggest change they see is in confidence and in how the kids treat each other, not in jump shots.

Every child gets their own printed HoopLife training booklet — the drills and the mindset work from the clinic, written down so they can keep using it after we drive away. That is deliberate. A clinic that ends when the van leaves is a nice two days; the booklet is what lets a kid keep going on their own.

Whoever is easiest. We work with band offices, education authorities, recreation coordinators, health and wellness teams, and principals, and often with more than one of them on the same visit. Get in touch and we will help work out who needs to be involved.

Yes, and a lot of communities do exactly that — it is often the easiest way to reach every young person rather than only the ones whose families would sign them up. We can run during the school day, after school, on a weekend, or a mix. Tell us what works for your community and we will build the two days around it.

The sooner the better, honestly. Our travel calendar fills up, and if your community needs us to fly in then flights have to be booked well ahead to keep your cost sensible. If you have a week in mind, even a rough one, request an estimate now and we will tell you straight away whether it is workable.

Both happen, and we would rather it was the first. Of our 218 visits across the country, a great many have been return trips to communities that had us back year after year — which is the point. A single visit is a good two days; a coach the kids recognise when he walks back into their gym is what actually builds something.

Fill in the form on this page with your community and roughly what you are after. Someone from our team gets back to you to work out the details — dates, days, how many kids, whether we drive or fly, whether you are hosting the coaches. Then we send you a written, itemised estimate by email. Nothing is committed until you say yes to it.