President of the Antigua & Barbuda Basketball Association (ABBA) Daryl Matthew, has commended the organisers of the Cool & Smooth Inter-schools Basketball Competition for their decision to re-introduce a mini girls section for the 2017 competition.
The competition, which opened last week, hosts six divisions with matches played at both the JSC basketball complex and the YMCA Sports Complex.
“I just heard you speaking about the Inter-schools Basketball and I want to commend the Ministry of Sports, for the first time in many years, having a mini girls’ basketball programme. I think it [augers] well for female basketball in Antigua & Barbuda so, after quite a few years of absence, I really want to big them up for being able to bring back this initiative and having mini girls’ basketball,” he said.
The re-introduction of the mini girls, Matthew added, means that the association stands to benefit from a larger pool of players becoming available for national selection.
“The school is where we expect to get our players and so on from, and so the fact that we now have a female programme and we have a female national team, we now have a breeding ground from which we can get female basketball players in the schools and I think it’s an excellent initiative and I really wish them well,” he said.
Teams are competing in the mini girls, mini boys primary, mini boys secondary, junior boys, senior girls and senior boys categories.