The Connecticut Starters Basketball Club has just finished our 20^th season and we continue to be one of the most successful and highly respected girls' basketball programs in the country. Our club is a member of the state and national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and participates in sanctioned tournaments at the state, regional and national levels.

This past spring and summer, our girls travel teams played a total of nearly 400 games including games in Orlando, Washington DC, Cincinnatti and Montreal!

As a whole, AAU girls basketball in the state continues to grow at a phonomenal rate. In 1988, there were 320 girls registered to play AAU basketball in Connecticut and this past season that number had grown to almost 2,500 girls playing on nearly 40 different clubs. Nationally, the number of girls playing AAU basketball has shot up from 18,499 back in 1988 to over 130,000 today! Michigan leads the way with over 9,000 girls registered.

One of the highlights of this past summer for our club was having 2 teams qualify for AAU National Tournaments (13 Red, 16 Red). The 11's won a gold medal at the Division II State AAU Tournament, while the 15 Red and 16 Red teams both won bronze medals in the Division I bracket.

Once again, many of our teams participated in a variety of prestigious tournaments, from the aforementioned AAU National tournaments and Blue Chip-Penn State tournament to the US Junior Nationals in Washington, DC and the Quebec Fall Basketball Festival just outside of Montreal

Alumnae

Former UConn All-American selection Nykesha Sales (Starters 1990-93) once again played for the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA this past season. During a pregame feature before Game 2 of the 2005 finals on ESPN2, a 1990 picture of 13 year old Nykesha in her CT Starters uniform was shown! Current University of Hartford coach and former UConn All-American Jennifer Rizzotti also played for the Starters, as did Maria Conlon, who won 3 national championships with the Huskies.

This season nearly 50 former CT Starters players will be playing college basketball, and almost 25 former Starter players or coaches will be coaching college basketball. Numerous others will be coaching at high schools throughout the Northeast.

In August '97 our website (www.ct-starters.org) was launched. Since then we have averaged over 1.5 million hits yearly, including visitors from Switzerland, Malaysia and Finland! Hundreds of people check it daily for news of our programs and to follow friends and family members playing on our teams. Webmaster Dennis Vincent keeps everyone updated at www.ctstarters.org, one of the top AAU Girls Basketball websites in the country.

Starter's AAU travel teams, summer camps, Dave Hopla shooting camps, Top 100 College Showcasees and Fall Leagues provide year-round basketball competition and instruction to over 1,000 girls from throughout New England. Club Directors Nick Economopoulos, Joe Ticotsky and Chris Ryba wish to extend their thanks to everyone involved for their continued support of