Current Process
The Northern California Region of National Junior Basketball (NJB) has reached a point where expansion has come to a halt. The last chapter created was Sequoia, when the Redwood chapter was split in half, five years ago. And even that expansion was as more the result of political needs for section balance than for adding any significant territory. There are many factors which have led up to this condition, but the one which stands out the most is the current model for expansion.
Up until this day NJB has created chapters when organic demand welled up in an area and a group of parents organized to break off and serve an under served and often adjacent territory of an existing chapter. This could be called a passive approach. The result has been a hodgepodge of chapters which range widely in geographical size, constituent demographics, number of teams fielded, and organizational structure and internal processes. New chapters have not been uniformly successful, as many of these chapters are able to consistently field the full range of Divisional and All-Net teams, and several struggle with finding sufficient gym time and revenue to keep operations going year on year. And yet within that haphazard approach have emerged impressively organized full service chapters with solid balance sheets and even auxiliary programs.
