The Cliff Anderson Sports Hall will become a basketball haven as 37 schools from around the country compete for the right to be called National Schools Basketball Champions beginning June 26.
That’s when Street Solutions and Next Level Entertainment (NLE) along with Banks DIH bounce off their annual National Schools Basketball Festival.
Street Solutions representative and co-ordinator of the tournament Chris Bowman told reporters at yesterday’s press conference to mark the launching, that this year the event will take a different twist since they have split the competitions into three divisions – under 15, 17 and 19 years.
He stated that the tournament will be much bigger than before since they have more schools participating and will also take on a more national look with schools coming from most parts of the country while the Ministry of Education has also been more active.
NLE representatives Jamaal Douglas and Travis Shepherd were on hand with the latter stating that their group is fully committed to sports development, especially in the schools.
The duo, famous for their massive annual nationwide basketball tournament, stated that they were in the process of planning a school tournament for later in the year before being approached by Bowman.
Marketing and Sales Executive at Banks DIH, Carlton Joao expressed his company’s satisfaction at being part of the event under the Sprite banner.
“Basketball is presently on the go and with persons tuning in nightly to see King James (Le Bron James) and Kobe (Bryant) doing their stuff nightly, it would only add more to the tournament because you know how kids are, so we are grateful to be part of this event again,” said Joao.
Meanwhile Director of Sport Neil Kumar who was also present noted that the event would be used for selection of Guyana’s Inter-Guiana Games (IGG) squad to defend their male basketball title in Suriname.
“Well I must say how happy I am to see how big this tournament has grown to be and with NLE and Banks on board, I think this will be the biggest ever. I pledge my continued support to the tournament and I am extremely happy that schools from Berbice and so on will be taking part,” Kumar said.
Out of the five previous tournaments, only once did a school from the city win and that was St Rose’s which took home the championship trophy in the first edition. But since the involvement of schools from Linden and Kwakwani, the Georgetown-based schools are finding it hard to even make the finals.
Linden Technical Institute (LTI) is the defending champions after dethroning Kwakwani Secondary in the finals last year. The school from the Upper Berbice River in Region Ten has won the title three times.
Special mention was made of McKenzie High School (MHS) in Linden which has been taking school basketball by storm. Led by Guyana’s top junior national ball player Akeem Kanhai, the school has won all the tournaments they have played since last year in Linden.
The 17-year-old Kanhai who many basketball pundits believe is the best at this level and is giving the senior players a run for their money, has been making a clean sweep of most of the individual awards up for grabs.
But also creating a stir is point guard Richard Mohandatt of President’s College. Mohandatt has accrued a few accolades to his name and apart from being named in the national youth team last year, he was the most valuable player (MVP) of the NSC Mashramani Schools Basketball Tournament and the President’s College Invitational. However, unlike Kanhai, he is yet to step up to the big league to prove his mettle.
Both players are going to be leading their respective schools in the tournament this year and fans will get a chance to see a preview of what to expect on June 26 after the opening ceremony with a match featuring 24 of the top school ballers around the country.
Co-ordinator Bowman said the players were chosen based on their performances in previous tournaments. Twelve schools will clash for the under-15 title, 24 in the under-17 and 12 for the under-19 championship.
The round robin games will start on June 27 and conclude on June 30. And on July 1 the knockout phase of the competition will bounce off, with the championship games and closing ceremony set for July 5.
