JABA targets day camps for overseas hopefuls
Published:Thursday | July 23, 2020 | 12:17 AMRobert Bailey/Gleaner Writer
With the cancellation of a number of basketball camps which usually serve as a platform for the country’s high school basketball players to secure scholarships to overseas universities, Paulton Gordon, president of the Jamaica Basketball Association (JABA) said his organisation will be staging several workouts to fill the gap.
These, he hope, will help secure moves abroad for the island’s top young basketball prospects.
The Digicel NBA camp, the Jump Star camp and as well as the Star Search clinic, which was scheduled for this summer, have all been cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
University scout
Gordon, explaining the value of these events, explained to The Gleaner that whenever these camps are held, they usually attract a lot of university scouts from the United States.
“It is a setback for us, but we are trying to have a series of day camps in August or September, and so we are talking to KFC about executing these plans,” said Gordon.
“We won’t have the scouts from overseas, but we will have the youngsters participating, and we will get some footage of them and send them to the relevant schools and scouts overseas,” he added.
“These cancellations have impacted our youth development programme and so, right now, we are trying to find ways of engaging the youngsters, and this is one of the ways we are looking at,” Gordon said.
The JABA boss noted that with strict safety protocols now in place as it relates to public gatherings, only the best players from last year’s school’s league will be selected to participate in the day camps.
“What we are trying to do is to look at the performance in the school leagues and identify the top six players from the different conferences and put them in for the day camp,” Gordon shared. “This will help us to manage the amount of players that we will take in at the camp because of the protocols that have been put in place by the Government.”
The day camps are expected to be held at the National Stadium courts.