The Mole Valley Phoenix Basketball Club was formed on January 2007, where we held our first ever open session at our home court at Dorking. It all started at around September 2006 where a group of friends from Epsom booked out the local indoor basketball court as it was too cold to play outside. After a few weeks of doing this we started to see the numbers grow as we kept inviting new players down. Luke Hall, our clubs general manager then decided to get his older brother Matthew who is an excellent coach to come and run this session. It proved very successful and all the players were enjoying it.

During this time Luke spotted an opportunity to start the basketball club in Mole Valley as the local council were willing to help out with funds. But to do this we had to move our playing venue to somewhere in the Mole Valley area and we chose Dorking. From here we held our first session on the first Sunday of January 2007. The first session saw more than thirty players turn up and this was all from verbal advertisement, and from here we realised the club had a big future.

The sessions carried on to get excellent turn outs and soon developed regulars who are still turning up to the sessions now. Head coach Matthew Hall then pushed to get a spin cycle session and a gym session for the players once every two weeks to help boost everyone’s fitness. These are some of the off court training the club are now providing, along with a waterworks session which was brought in shortly after. These off court training sessions were what set us apart from any other club in the country, and was set to only begin in our fifth year of our five year plan. But we managed to achieve it in a couple of months.

For the 2007 – 2008 season Mole Valley Phoenix are entering an u16’s team into the local Surrey League and an u18’s team into the National League Southern Conference II. This has been a huge achievement as we have formed two very strong teams in the space of ten months. We have also opened various other sessions across the week including a men’s, u12’s, u14’s and a girls session. A typical week for the club would be these sessions plus the u16’s team training, u18’s team training and u18’s waterworks, spin cycle and gym sessions.

Today the club have secured sponsorship with Swish Basketball and Bright. The club has seventeen coaches with a level 1 qualification or above. The u18’s have started their season with a very strong team and are hoping to make the play-offs.

We would like to thank everyone who has helped the club in any way because without all the help we received the club would not be in the position it is at the moment. We believe the club has got a big future in British Basketball and hope to attract the best talent in the country.