Fife Steel Basketball Club shares Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations award after being selected from 46,500 voluntary organisations

A two-minute video entry, during which Fife Steel players and coaches championed the club’s values including teamwork, enthusiasm, enjoyment, leadership, behaviour and communication, impressed judges sufficiently to take joint top honours at Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

"It was fantastic to win,” club chairman Ross Hugh, of Kirkcaldy, whose son Gavin, 22, plays for Fife Steel’s senior men’s team, told the Fife Free Press. “To be recognised for what we do in the community was excellent. It was like a red carpet event with a big film theatre upstairs.

"We didn’t get a prize for winning, it was just that recognition that we took part in promoting Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. The prestige means a lot to us.

"In the video, we showed what Fife Steel does for the community in all age ranges, trying to put across our values and the fact that we are growing sport. We provide a health and wellbeing outlet where kids and adults can come along and enjoy sport.

"We work quite closely with Active Schools to identify kids from more underprivileged areas and give them free access to basketball training.

"We also do community work, going out and running sessions for Active Schools.

"Now we can show that video to other people, put it on the different social media platforms and it gives people a snippet of what we do within the club.”

At the recent ceremony in Edinburgh, Fife Steel’s representatives included Ross, Gavin, youth player Charlie Jack and his sister Alix, plus their parents Alastair and Vicky who were photographed on stage with Jamie Moffat of Active Schools Development.

In the competition-winning video, which can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/9tEvLQ_pmPk a section was narrated by Gavin, who said: “We supply an active environment for health and wellbeing for the local community. Our players are encouraged to be good leaders who communicate effectively in groups.

"This helps with physical as well as mental health.

"Our club strives for the best. We aim to grow our community by helping to support coaches who will assist in increasing numbers with our younger sections, promote walking basketball and expand access to basketball through the local school network in Fife.”

Fife Steel’s various squads boast players aged from seven to 76-year-old Stewart Capaldi – an ex-Scotland international - with a total of eight teams playing regular matches at Windmill Community Campus or St Andrews High School and older participants like Capaldi taking part in the walking basketball established at the club in June 2022.

Chairman Ross, 55, who originally set up the club with PE teacher Willie Thomson in 2015, also coaches the walking basketball.

He explained: “It is for people aged 45 and over and helps to get more parents involved in playing. They appreciate the sport that their son or daughter is doing, so this lets them get involved in the basketball themselves.

"I would say walking basketball is still a new initiative in Scotland. It's been going on in England a wee bit longer. There are only three other clubs in the central belt doing it so we’re not advanced enough yet to form a league.

"But some people we have are quite keen to take part in a league and others say they are just in it for the recreational side.”

Fife Steel is currently looking for new members aged seven and over. If interested, please email [email protected] to register an interest or for further information.