The Basketball Academy has been a tremendous success since its formation as one of the original academies at SGS College in 2004.

Student athletes, from the age of 16, are given the opportunity to combine academic study with up to 20 hours of top-level coaching every week from Bristol Flyers Head Coach and Great Britain Under 20’s Head Coach, Andreas Kapoulas, England Under-15 assistant coach, Chris Bourne and England Under-17 Head Coach, Guy Coles.

The Academy is comprised of three squads including the Performance team made up of players who have played at a high regional or national level and the Development team made up of players training to make the next step as high performance athletes.

Our first team competes in the EABL, which is the premier Under-19 competition in the country and three times our academy has been national finalists. We have also won six national titles including the British College’s Cup and the AOC Cup, while our second team consistently competes at the top of the South-West Championships.

Many of our students go on from SGS to university on scholarships, both nationally in Britain and abroad. Currently, we have six students enrolled at Division 1 and Division 2 universities in America and at CIS level colleges in Canada.

Our student athletes practice and play on a BBL standard court, which seats up to 750 spectators. They get supervised sessions from our strength and conditioning coaches at our state-of-the-art gym and receive the best nutrition, performance analysis and injury prevention advice from our performance laboratory team.

Links with the Bristol Flyers

We have a very strong relationship with the Bristol Flyers built up over many years.  The club’s junior age group teams feed into our Academy programme, which in turn feeds the Flyers men’s team that competes in the professional British Basketball League. Flyers’ guard, Greg Streete, a former Academy student captains the BBL side.

Our top academy players regularly train with the Flyers senior teams and also get the chance to line out for the club in Under-18 and men’s competitions.

We are developing a female programme with links to the Bristol Flyers’ Women’s team, who provide our girls with the opportunity to play at National League Division One level.

Our Basketball Academy are looking for students who are hard-working, committed and disciplined, who are both willing to be coached and want to succeed. Our aim is that leaving our academy, our Academy athletes will be best prepared to take that next step in their lives.