Basketball festival offers youthful teams real tournament exposure
Basketball Artists School whitewashed Oshana Basketball School beating the northern competitors by 11:0 during the finals of a mini-tournament in Windhoek over the weekend. In the girl’s division, Deutsche Hoehere Privatschule floored the Basketball Artists’ team, 12:0.
Played on Saturday 10 August, the matches were the culmination of the first-ever basketball festival organised and presented by the vibrant, youthful committee of the Namibia Basketball School League. All matches were played at Basketball Artists School in Katutura, Windhoek.
The festival attracted active players, parents and supporters, starting the day with a Parent Player basketball for Life fun day. Parents joined team-based activities that taught inclusion and team work. A set of Sport2Life life skills activities started off the morning and ended with a small tournament with a mix of parents and players.
Throughout the day, the volunteers from Jinels Models Namibia helped to organise the various activities.
The day continued with a 3×3 tournament for u_15 boys and girls playing for cash prizes.
Pondo Nailenge from Oshana Basketball School said his players enjoyed the trip to Windhoek, but even more so, appreciated the opportunity to play in a tournament.
“This exposure served them well as this showed the other players that the northern regions produce competitive players. We hope to take part in more competitions such as this and thus are happy that the Federation is really working to its goal of uniting all the various basketball bodies in one footprint,” he said.
Helping to make the day a success was the Deutsche Basketball Bund, Bokomo Namibia, OTB Sport, Pako Children’s magazine and the Namibia Basketball Federation.
Caption: A level-3 coaching clinic was held concurrently with the mini-tournament. This clinic was presented by Ramah Mumba, Secretary General of the Namibian Basketball Federation and Development Officer, Malakia Matias. These coaches had earlier completed the first and second level training courses.
