Namibia represented well at basketball tournament in Botswana
The Namibian Basketball Federation (NBF) recently sent a 6 person delegation to the annual u18 3×3 IBF Young Lions Cup Tournament in Gaborone, Botswana, with the aid of the Namibia National Sports Commission (NNOC).
The tournament ran under the theme 3×3 Unite, which looked at guiding the Youth Leaders towards problem solving for the issues hindering sport growth in their respective countries and life skills issues with the players present.
The delegation was made up of a male team of four, Noah Hilengwa, Ngatjikare Tjitamunisa, Javier Nghishilenapo and Pedro Pasile and also wearing national colours were Petrina Aron, International Basketball Federation (FIBA), IBF Beneficiary and Mantius Amukoshi the first ever 3×3 Unite Youth Leader.
Aron shared her story as guest speaker during the tournament and said she was very grateful to the FIBA, IBF and 3×3 Unites and how sports has been a major life changing tool for her.
“I am glad that I was able to speak about my past with youth from so many different parts of our continents and be able to relate with all of them on its despite our various differences,” she emphasised.
Amukoshi said about his experience that being the first ever 3×3 Youth Leader to represent the country is an honour and it was a wonderful learning experience, and that he can not wait to implement the skills shared to him during the workshop in the basketball community.
Pedro Pasile scooped the Male IBF Leadership Award, because of his outlook on the necessity of having the girl child represented more in sports.
“I believe that we need to keep pushing girls to join sports and give them the same respect in the field of play just as we do with male athletes,” he said.
According to NBF this year’s tournament took a different approach to those prior, by having a mixed team set up, which saw the players from the various countries playing with new faces and having to learn to bond with different cultures. Therefore the Namibian players did not play together as Team Namibia but each represented the country in the unified teams.
Noah Hilengwa was on the winning team for the tournament and brought back a gold medal for team Namibia. “I was very excited to be part of this new approach at unifying players through sport and more ecstatic that my team worked well together despite our different background,” he added. His team mates were from Madagascar, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
Present at the games were close to 54 countries and the tournament looked very deeply into bring the aspect of unification alive amongst the players. Various workshop were held with the Youth Leaders and the players all of which looked at putting very different individuals together to make them one, which was further practised during the actual games when the players played on teams with players from different countries.
