Policeman-turned-sports coach Ian Hirst is winning plaudits with a unique scheme encouraging teenagers to escape boredom by playing basketball. Health Editor Barry Nelson reports.

EVERY week, scores of teenagers from far-flung parts of Teesdale and Weardale flock to play basketball. Their parents are willing to drive for miles to ensure their sons and daughters get their weekly fix of healthy, out-of-school exercise.

And every teenager who signs up for a basketball coaching session at the Teesdale Leisure Centre, in Barnard Castle, brings a smile to the face of Ian Hirst, a former beat policeman who has carved out a new full-time role as an inspirational sports coach.

Ian has come a long way since he and his wife Alison started a basketball club at his local primary school in Crook, back in 1997. Partly to encourage children to take more physical exercise and partly to increase their self-esteem and confidence, the basketball project has gone from strength to strength, and expanded to cover large areas of the region.

Last year, Ian took a basketball team from Wolsingham School and Community College to glory when they won the under-19s England Schools Basketball Association championship. That was despite the team having to play every match away from home because the school gym is so basic.

Apart from the Wolsingham triumph, youth teams coached by Ian (with the help of colleagues Mal Ballard and Dave Elderkin) under the Wear Valley Basketball Club banner managed to finish as runners-up in the under-15s North Conference - while the under 18s team managed to win their North Conference league.

While this club success is reason enough to celebrate, what really gets Ian going is his involvement in a scheme designed to encourage rural teenagers to take up basketball. His achievement in this arena - as part of a national initiative called Positive Futures - helped Ian to win the Unsung Hero category in last year's regional BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, not to mention Durham Sport's Volunteer of the Year award.

"It is an initiative which aims to divert kids away from anti-social behaviour by using sport as a vehicle," says Ian, who has been seconded to the project and remains a serving police officer. "The idea is to give young people something to focus on in their life."

Apart from encouraging young people to take up a positive activity, the scheme also fits in well with another scheme operating in the Durham Dales, called LEAP (Local Exercise Action Pilot) which also tries to get young people involved in a variety of sports. The LEAP project is co-ordinated by David Allen and includes activities such as new age curling - a cross between ice curling and carpet bowls.

"There is a lot of crossover between LEAP and what I do. They have a mainly health agenda and we have an anti-social behaviour agenda but you would find it extremely difficult to separate the two," says Ian.

One of the long-term aims is to encourage young people to obtain qualifications in basketball coaching and get involved more seriously in the game at county level. Ian is pleased at the progress achieved in the last year but wants to take things on to a new level.

One of his ambitions is to ape Midnight Basketball, an initiative which has been a great success in inner-city America. He believes that it can work in a rural County Durham setting. In the US, it has seen young people attend late-night basketball sessions led by leading professional players.

The idea is that North-East teenagers who are put off by conventional youth club activities will jump at the chance to spend a few hours in the company of a 'cool' and glamorous basketball professional, who may be a black American from the Bronx or some other inner-city area.

A dry run, which involved Newcastle Eagles black American coach Fab Fournoye taking a couple of sessions with local teenagers, suggests that the scheme will take off. "We have had the head coach from the Newcastle Eagles come down to do a couple of sessions for us. In the areas some of these youngsters come from, they are not going to meet people like the Eagles head coach, who is black and from the Bronx," says Ian. Newcastle Eagles have also provided courtside seats for young people enrolled on the Durham Dales scheme.

Ian is determined to run the late-night sessions along American lines. "So far, we have not been able to deliver the late-night sessions but it is going to happen. The main problem that we have is not so much transport, because parents are willing to drive miles to help their kids, but the right venue," he says. "Rather than starting at midnight, we would probably do it from 10pm to midnight." He has a number of options in mind and is confident that the late-night sessions will happen in the near future.

Apart from the weekly Barnard Castle basketball nights, Ian also runs coaching sessions at a wide range of venues around the dales. While the emphasis of Positive Futures is reaching young people in more deprived rural areas, the sessions attract a real social mix. Ian is particularly keen on getting through to a minority of alienated young people who might otherwise drift into anti-social behaviour or crime. "Most of them will latch on to something and it seems that basketball can do the trick," he says. "You only need a chink in their armour."

Ian is thrilled by the progress his scheme has made but he realises that there are limitations on what can be achieved. "It would be idealistic to think you are going to get all of them because you are never going to do that. You need realistic aims and objectives," he says.

The success of the Barnard Castle sessions has surprised Ian because initial efforts to bus teenagers in from all over the area were unsuccessful. "We tried minibuses and failed because the kids wouldn't get on them," he says. "The funny thing is when we stopped the minibuses, we suddenly got dozens of kids turning up. The parents bring them from all over the place. For us it is a massive bonus."

Sam Taallah, 16, from Cockfield, has been coming to the Barnard Castle basketball sessions for about a year. "I go to Staindrop Comprehensive and that's how I got involved. It's the only sport I can play. I love it and my mates come as well," says Sam.

"We thought we didn't like sport but this is great," says Laura Philp from Teesdale Comprehensive school, in Barnard Castle. "I like Mr Hirst - he's canny," is the verdict of Tracey Priestley, 15, also from Barnard Castle.

Ian is very grateful for the support of parents, who understand the importance of ensuring youngsters get involved in positive activities. "If we can use this to help some of them achieve some kind of coaching qualification within sport, it will probably be a better achievement than taking them on a four-day outward bound course," he says.

In the long run, Ian hopes that the project will stand on its own feet and that a new youth basketball club can be founded. Within the next six months, the Positive Futures team will be looking to run more sports courses, including football coaching. "The bottom line is that you can't afford to waste young talent. This is giving young people an opportunity in life," says Ian.