Team Profile - Solent Kestrels


The Solent Stars were founded in 1980 with a starting line up of Ken Walton, Trevor Denny, Marvin Johnson, J Robinson, Paul Philip and Jimmy Guymon, who later founded the Solent Stars youth programme for young kids (mainly his son Matt Guymon) in Southampton who had asspirations of playing in the USA. The club had been formed at the end of the previous season from two Southern League teams - Portsmouth Pirates and Southampton Sharks.

The Solent Stars were successful for many seasons and in the 80's and 90's had a few thousand as the average attendance (which in the UK for that time was very high) they were increasingly successful, winning three national cups and four play-off championships.



Despite this going into the new millenium the team was on a downward spiral and at the end of the 2000-2001 season finished second to bottom in the National Basketball League Confrence, with a record of 6 wins 15 losses Solent was lossing and lossing bad, they tried to make amends in 2001/2002 finishing the season in 3rd place behind Plymouth Raiders and Teeside Mohawks from there however the seasons got worse finishing from between 8th and 12th in the rest of the final years of the club, eventually finishing 8th in 2006/07 when the club finally folded after receiving minimal support.


The final closing of the Solent Stars was expected to end the Solent youth programme however they decided to break away from the Stars broke after the team started using the youth funds to pay for players and hall rental, this eventually leaded to the creation of the Solent Kestrels the current best youth team in Hampshire and possibly the South of England.....

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