The Garden City Athletic Association (GCAA) is accepting applications for intramural basketball. The season will start Dec. 1 and run until March 15, 2008. Please note that the GCAA intramural basketball program is not associated with Garden City basketball.

The GCAA has over 50 years experience in community sports. Its intramural basketball program had over 750 participants last year from Grades K-8. It had almost 300 adult volunteers in its basketball program. The GCAA offers intramural leagues as follows:

Grade 2 - boys and girls (first time ever uniforms, refs etc.) anyone who joined the first grade clinics last year knows these kids are game ready! Let's play games this year!

Grade 3 - boys

Grade 4 - boys

Grades 3-4 - girls

Grades 5-6 - boys

Grades 5-8 - girls

The GCAA offers grades K-1 clinics at St Paul's. Run by a host of former players and dedicated dads, the GCAA tries to offer quality clinics with emphasis on learning and fun.

The GCAA offers grade-based weeknight clinics run by professionals. How about Rising Stars Monday clinics last year where attendance was fantastic and the boys and girls received free, firsthand teaching from former collegiate greats Danny Gimpel and Chuck Everson, among others.

The GCAA offers professionally run coaches clinics.

The intramural games for Grade 3 and above will have scoreboards, clocks and referees. Standings are kept in Grade 4 and above. Playoffs are held for Grade 3 and above.

Rules for each division are posted on the website.

All intramural teams are selected by a "draft" process ensuring that the talent pool is spread as evenly as possible. The goal is to have equal teams in every division.

Travel players are invited to participate and are highlighted at drafts so coaches know who plays travel and who doesn't.

The GCAA screens every adult volunteer through the sex offender registry. The GCAA screened the people who ran the organizations it brought in to run clinics last year. Online signup is popular these days. The GCAA does not offer this because it simply doesn't want your child's personal information sourced out to a third party organization. Although that information is said to be kept private the GCAA would rather collect applications the old fashioned way to ensure confidentiality.

Applications are available at St Paul's, the recreation department and on the GCAA website, www.gc-aa.com, or type this link into your browser "www.gc-aa.com/basketballapplication2007.doc" and mail to the GCAA.

Please realize there are two different intramural programs in town and make sure you sign up for GCAA basketball. Visit the website for more information about playing in the GCAA travel program, which starts in October.