Mark Clark – Director of Barking Abbey – Hoopsfix Podcast Ep. 6
Mark Clark will be a familiar name with many British basketball fans.
The Director of the GB Regional Institute, Barking Abbey in East London, former GB and England Senior Women’s Head Coach, and father to GB Senior players Dan Clark and Ella Clark (among other things; he also commentates on the EuroLeague & for FIBA, and used to coach in the BBL), Mark has been around his fair share of basketball.
I got the opportunity to sit down and chat with him last Thursday (the morning after the GB – Bosnia & Herzegovina game) to talk hoops, and for the first time in a while, managed to keep it to an hour! Though there was a lot of stuff we didn’t have the chance to get into (perhaps will bring him back for a future episode), he did share a lot of interesting stuff.
In this episode, here from Mark on:
- How he first got into basketball and coaching
- Why he set up Barking Abbey, and what makes it a GB Regional Institute
- What has happened to the other network of regional institutes that were meant to be started
- How he looks back on his time with the GB Senior Women’s programme & why he resigned
- His most memorable basketball moment (it involves Mike D’Antoni)
- Why Andrea Congreaves is the most impressive junior player he has ever seen
- What happened with the East London Royals BBL franchise in 2012 that folded before it launched
- Why he thinks a lot of the criticism the BBL receives is unfair
- Why he is standing for a Director role within England Basketball this year
As always, I’d love to get your feedback, come back after you’ve listened and lets get some discussion going in the comments.
The show has been approved on iTunes – find it here and please subscribe to automatically receive new episodes straight to your phone/computer/tablet (ignore the BBC 5 Live podcast it has automatically pulled in on iTunes, I’m working on getting it removed)!
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