The Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) has confirmed July 7 as the date for the restart of their Open and Third Division League.

The scheduling of the league had been affected by the hosting of a number of sporting events and other activities at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH).

However, the date was finalized yesterday following a meeting with president of GABA, Trevor Rose and the National Sports Commission (NSC) to review available dates on the NSC’s calendar.

Rose has been pushing for the restart of the league which was first paused due to the hosting of Mashramani activities at the Sports Hall. This postponement was followed shortly after by  another hiatus for the hosting of the Mackeson National Super Ward Basketball Champion-ships.

Since then due to the staging of boxing cards, table tennis and hockey tournaments, among other events, Rose had been unable until yesterday to finalize an available date for the use of GABA’s basketball facility of choice for the hosting of the tournaments.

Speaking to Stabroek Sport via telephone yesterday Rose said that although GABA has a date he is hoping that nothing hinders the restart of the league. “With luck we’re set to start on July 7,” Rose said.

The GABA president said, however, he hasn’t yet scheduled the nights when the league games will be played but an official game schedule will be formatted shortly based on the available days  identified to him by the NSC.

“We don’t have confirmed dates like how we would normally had our schedule running with games on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday… it’s more spaced out because of the unavailability,” Rose said.

Rose further reiterated that this is due to “national hockey training, hockey competitions, boxing and other sporting disciplines scheduled to have activities and training sessions there [CASH]”.

“Due to that we’ll have to settle for what we’re getting right now,” Rose added.

Nevertheless, Rose stated that GABA needs to get the league restarted as soon as possible and the GABA head is optimistic that this will be done successfully with the advent of an additional sponsor that has recently came on board for the continuation of the league.

“We need to get it done so we need to work with what we’re getting,” Rose said, adding that only a few games remain before the league enters its playoff stage.