Basketball Yukon is looking for both boys and girls team head coaches to lead the charge for the 2012 Arctic Winter Games.

At minimum, Basketball Yukon is looking for full NCCP level 2 certification or Competition Advanced certification.

Basketball Yukon vice-president Mark Hureau said advertising for the positions is more of a formal process.

The territory's b-ball community has coaches qualified and willing.

"There are coaches that we know can coach,” Hureau said. "We're not desperate; we're not, ‘Oh God, we have no one to coach.' We do actually have people who are ready to step in right away. It's just a formal process so that people don't get overlooked.”

Hureau said the issue will be with attracting players rather than coaches.

"Our coaching is pretty good. It's a commitment of players that's usually a bigger problem,” he said.

"We've got names of people already that we know will do it, and we know they're qualified, we just want to give everyone a chance to voice their interest

Whitehorse will host the 2012 Arctic Winter Games from March 4-10.

The age for Arctic Games basketball is under-19. Those playing college ball are ineligible.

"The (Arctic) Games are created for people who don't have an opportunity to play anywhere else,” Hureau said.

The other issue is drawing enough female players.

Hureau coached the last Arctic Winter Games girls team and the 2009 Canada Summer Games team.

"We had girls two years ago and they all kind of moved on,” said Hureau.

"We took a U15 team basically to a U17 championship, and those girls were tremendous. If they had kept going, they would have been the best team ever, and we just kind of lost them. We just lost athletes to other sports. Now we have to build another team.”

Basketball Yukon will be running U13 development programs starting Sept. 17. Both programs will give players two weekly on-court sessions focused on fundamentals and skills.

The girls program will run Saturdays from noon to 2 p.m. and Thursdays from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., both at Jack Hulland School. The boys will go Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at F.H. Collins Secondary School gym.

Cost for the programs is $125, with registration for both programs at the first girls session. Players can also register early at Sport Yukon, and will be provided with a program schedule at the first session.

There will also be a Steve Nash Program offered to boys and girls aged 6-10 running from Sept. 17-Dec. 3 at Jack Hulland School from 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

The cost for that program is $60 per player.

"Basketball is a late-development sport, so it's not like soccer where you're young and you're fast and that means you're good,” Hureau said. "In basketball, you don't really get good until you're in your 20s, so you take a long time to get good, and if you drop it, just coming out is not going to do it.

We need kids in the program, and right now the girls have kind of faded. Other sports have taken our girls away.”

The boys, by contrast, are going strong, Hureau said, noting that the Team

Yukon boys team competed at nationals this summer.

He added that the Basketball Yukon will have a better idea who will be head coaches for the Arctic Games at an executive meeting next week.