By Neto Baptiste
Teams competing in future competitions organised by the Antigua and Barbuda Basketball Association (ABBA) could benefit from the body’s acquisition of two locker rooms to be stationed at the JSC basketball complex.
This was revealed by president of the organisation, Kebra Nanton, who said the body secured the rooms with the help of the Ministry of Sports.
“One thing we did is that we got some locker rooms for JSC. They are not there as yet but we got some external locker rooms to be put on both ends so that in between the games the teams have somewhere they could go instead of being on the outside and changing their clothes and so on,” she said.
“We purchased one and the Ministry of Sports donated the other one and it is very important if you think long term because usually we would have to rent these locker rooms but now we have our own. They have fully outfitted but we intend to put some hand washing stations in them as well because of the whole Covid-19 situation and we don’t know how long this is going to last,” she added.
Nanton, who was elected to lead the association some two years ago, however said that planned renovation to some aspects of the complex, including its roof are currently on whole due to insufficient funding.
“Definitely needs to be upgraded but at a time like this and with money now being a very big issue there is little that can be done. I have expressed my interest in getting the roof fixed because as you may know, the roof has been leaking for some time now. We have tried to, on our own, see if we could some materials and source some [metal] to get it done and that wasn’t so successful but we are still trying. The other thing I wanted to try and do was some minor work here and there,” the president said.
Basketball was the first competitive sport to officially cancel its tournament in March this year. The move came after the country recorded its first case of the coronavirus.