The Lancashire Schools Basketball competitions are run to provide meaningful competition, for development of basketball, a good way to keep fit but most of all for enjoyment.

The competitions have been running for many years but records from before the early 90's are very sparse. If the original trophies ever turn up then a list of winners could be taken from them but these have long since disappeared. If you find one in the your schools trophy cabinet feel free to keep the trophy, just send the list of winners to the website.

Phil Holden
Phil Holden formerly of from Penwortham Priory High School is owed a great debt by all of us keen to play basketball in Lancashire as it was at his instigation that the schools competition was started. (There may be others who were involved in the early years. Email information if you know of anyone else). Phil was the organiser of the competition in the 80's and into the early 90's until his retirement. Since then there were quite a few involved in running individual competitions: Tony Taylor, Brendan Baird, Dale Scott, Martin Pigott, Jeremy Mannino and Kieren Sutcliffe but from the 1996 Martin has been running all of the competitions.

Under 13, 14, 15 and 16 competitions have been running from the early days in various formats. Some were straight knockout, others were pool games with winners going forward to the knockout stages. The current format is mini leagues with the top 2 going into the knockout rounds.

The competition that was quite different was the Under 14's which was run using a round robin style until the 02/03 season. Schools would be put into two different groups of 3 or 4 teams, all playing each other on the same night. The results were then aggregated and put into one table, the top 8 reaching the quarter finals and being seeded according to their league position.

Under 12's and Girls Basketball
For many years there were just the four age group competitions; Under 13, 14, 15 and 16. The 2005/6 season saw the introduction of the Under 12's and two girls competitions at U14 and U16.

Under 19's
From the early 90's there was a North West 6th Forms League run by Peter Koziura (Bury Grammar) which was very successfull so there was no real need for a Lancashire 6th form version. After Peter's retirement Adrian Carter ran the league for a few years but it has since folded hence the introduction from the 2011-12 season of LSBBA under 19 competitions.

English Schools
Lancashire Champions gained entry into the English Schools competitions from the 2009/10 season. The age groupings for this are under 16 and under 14 and the LSBBA competitions now reflect those banded age groups.

Definition of Lancashire
Lancashire is made up of the present county council border, including Blackburn with Darwen, Fylde and Blackpool. This is how Lancashire is recognised by England Basketball in their definition of counties.

This excludes areas such as Bury, Bolton, Rochdale, Oldham, Stockport, Southport, Liverpool, Manchester etc which could be considered Lancashire by tradition. There are other competitions (rugby and cricket to name but two) that follow this traditional border.

There is another completely unrelated competition called "Lancashire Schools Basketball" that has a few selected schools from Bolton, Bury, Oldham and Rochdale competing in it. This was a deliberate name choice by the person setting the competition up as he was aggrieved that his school in Bury could not gain entry into the LSBBA competition.

Basketball Development Officer
A good job was done by Sara Abbis but when she moved on she was not replaced and the role of BDO was left vacant for a number of years.

With the setting up of the Lancashire Basketball Association in the 2006-7 season this issue of not having a BDO was addressed and they secured funding for this post. Adam Cowperthwaite was appointed in 2009. However, this post is no longer in existence.

There are many clubs that operate in and around Lancashire such as the Hyndburn League, the LBA or on the Manchester Area Basketball League (MABL).