… Minister Anthony lauds youth investment initiative
THE highly anticipated Youth Basketball Guyana (YBG) was officially launched yesterday at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall under the theme: ‘Laying the Foundation, Creating a Future’ and has received resounding kudos from those in influential positions in sports in Guyana especially from the Minister of Sport, Dr Frank Anthony. Under the guidance of Street Solutions, known for their annual National Schools’ Basketball Festival (NSBF), the YBG Programme is geared to be a nucleus for the longevity of the sport in Guyana, according to Co-Founder Chris Bowman.
Bowman and Rayad Boyce, both will man the YBG initiative. Speaking at yesterday’s launching, Bowman also pointed out that the idea was “conceived with the idea of encouraging youngsters across the country to just simply keeping playing the sport”.
Bowman boasted about the success of the NSBF which has been in existence for the past five years and said that “while all of our programmes are carefully planned and considered to be significant, we felt that tournaments alone were not enough to really grow the game in a sustainable, meaningful way in the long term”.
A website was unveiled – www.youthbasketballguyana.com,  which is being powered by P2H2 Designs known for their annual publication of the Guyana Basketball Review Magazine and the Haynes Foundation.
Bowman said that the website was a simple idea that was mooted by Paul Haynes and was embraced and immediately forged partnership.
Meanwhile, Minister Anthony, one of the main speakers, lauded the initiative calling it the good nexus for the development of the game.
The sports minister spoke of his ministry’s building of several courts and said that the YBG programme could not have been launched at a more appropriate time.
Several exhibition games were played yesterday, with a game between the Junior Elite Players and the Masters capping the day’s proceedings.
The YBG Junior Elite team comprises players 21 years and under. Bowman said they were put together because of the special abilities and given the fact that they are all really ‘ELITE’ junior players.
“We have players such as Akeem Kanhai who many believe is one of the best young talents we’ve had in a long time, Richard Mohandatt, who is on his way to being the same, and a bunch of other talented youths whom we want to see reach their full potential. It’s not about them just being good at the youth level, but also college-drafted materials because they also have good educational back-grounds,” Bowman told Chronicle Sport.
Akeem Kanhai will lead his troops against Georgetown’s top first division club – Ravens – tonight from 20:30 h, in a game which will be carefully looked at given the amount of preparation the junior players had.
“We want to see what they are made of, so with them playing against the team like Ravens, we could not have asked for a better way,” Bowman said.