Goulburn Basketball Association is readying to resume normal operations following the three-month COVID-19 layoff.
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Committee member Andrew Stewart said the Bears had not been heavily impacted by the lockdown and will begin a shortened winter season in just over two weeks.
The seniors will get underway on July 21, with juniors to follow on July 22. Only nine rounds will be played, with finals scheduled for the tenth round. Stewart said the association chose to run a shortened competition so as not to infringe on its usual summer competition.
"[The winter competition] usually goes over two terms, but this time we're just doing nine rounds plus a final across all grades," Stewart said.
"A lot of the other sports have only the one season, whereas we run all year, so we'll just have our summer comp start in term four.
"We were either going to run a shortened comp or an extended one for three terms. We went with just the one term over winter, and decided to let everyone have a chance to get their teams organised over summer.
"We haven't got as many nominations in, because a lot of teams have decided to sit out winter."
While the local competitions will run business as usual for nine rounds, there have been some changes to the senior representative competition.
In 2019, the Bears had both a senior women and youth men's team take part in the NSW Waratah League, but after the break it was announced that the women's competition will no longer run due to a lack of interest.
However, the men's youth league will continue with Goulburn set to play 10 matches in nine weeks.
"Originally the senior competition was canned, and they were just going to run the elite competition," Stewart said. "But everything changed when everything started to open up and they reassessed and put out interest across the state.
"Unfortunately there wasn't enough interest for the open women, so that was 50-50 at best. The two options were a shortened season, or nothing at all. But there wasn't enough interest.
"There was enough interest for our youth men, so they'll have a shortened season. Across the state there were 12 teams interested, so rather than having a home and away season, they'll just play half the teams at home and half away."
While some sporting associations have struggled financially due to the shutdown, Stewart said the Bears had survived largely unscathed.
"When we shut down, we didn't have many ongoing expenses," he said. "We probably lost a little bit of money, but nothing that's going to put us in crisis."
