After a week long chain of activities at inaugural Northern Youth Alive Basketball programme including Coaches seminar tagged “Train the Trainer”, an U14 Basketball Clinic and competition at the Murtala Muhammed Square in Kaduna,National Daily learnt.
Fourteen year old Bolarinwa Ifeoluwa of Christ Divine Favour College, Lagos put up an MVP performance to help Deepbond Academy Lagos emerge champions defeating Lord Knows Academy Kaduna 47-38 in the U14 championship heralding the Youth development programme. Excel Academy Kaduna took 3rd place ahead of Malali Basketball Academy 57-42 in the 3rd place playoffs.
The event supported by NNPC/SNEPCO was just about the kids competing against themselves and coached trying out new skills learnt at the “Train the Trainer” Workshop but impacting live of young individuals in the community.
National Daily gathered that the Youth Alive officials had a food and shoe drive for 50 underprivileged kids in Kaduna, powered by the Samaritan Feet Organisation, who donated the shoes to the course.
Honorary Awards were also presented to Nigeria Basketball legends and officials in Kaduna State, such as Skambo Morrison, Chairman Kaduna State Basketball Association, coach Sani Turi, Head Coach Kaduna Basketball; former Kaduna State Coach Haladu Tank, former Head Coach U16 national women team Adeka Daudu, Emmanuel Odah and former D’Tigers forward and Kaduna indigene Bashir Chedir.
A total of 8 Basketball Academies, 116 children and 31 officials took part in the 5-Day event. Malali Basketball Academy Kaduna, Real ones Academy Kaduna, Gilali Balls Abuja, Jigawa Junior Rocks and Aspire Academy completed the ranking from 4th – 8th position respectively in the classification of the teams, with Excel Academy Kaduna taking 3rd position, Lord Knows Academy and champions Deepbond Lagos completing the Top 2.
Founder of the Youth Alive Basketball Programme, Gbade Latona thanked the partners Kaduna State Basketball and NNPC/SNEPCO for their support to the Northern adventure, the first of the 10 year existence of the project.
He enjoined the Academy coaches and the State Association to maximize the imprint made and build on the Youth Alive foundation, by building a structured developmental basketball programme and Youth League to help the development of the kids and coaches in the state.
“We brought this here to help our Northern brothers join us in Lagos and South West to build a proper foundation for Nigeria Basketball. These kids must learn the proper fundamentals of the game so they can grow to compete with their counterparts all over the world”.
“Most importantly we want to kill the age cheat syndrome. Children with the proper ages must begin to represent Nigeria at age grade competitions and it all starts with catching them young now”. He added
The Youth Alive Basketball train makes its next stop in Ekiti for it’s 4th Ekiti Youth Alive programme while Ogun State have also made their interest known to the organisation for an event before the end of the year.