FOLLOWING the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and elections of the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA), Haslyn Graham was voted in as president and he has stated that his immediate focus would be to develop the game from the youth level.

“I want LABA to be the model for basketball development in Guyana,” said Graham while speaking with Chronicle Sport yesterday.
“We have the resources to make it happen and it would also take a holistic approach by everyone, all the players, all the teams, for this to happen”.
Graham, a Mines Maintenance Senior Planner at BOSAI will have Brian Lewis as his first vice-president, Abdulla ‘Zico’ Hamid second vice-president, Dawn Barker treasurer, Robert Byass (assistant treasurer) and Annalyse Roman (assistant secretary).
LABA’s Public Relation Officer (PRO) is Clyde Brusche while Joseph Lawrence, Simone Ault and Patrick Clarke will all serve as committee members.
According to Graham, under his tenure as president, there’s no place for anything that would derail the forward movement of the sport in the community.
“I’m aware that sometimes things can go wrong, but under my presidency, certain things I wouldn’t allow to happen. There’s always a way to deal with things and work it out as gentlemen. So I would be working closely with everyone to see the game progress and bring back the sport to how I remember it back in the days” said Graham.
Graham, who also served as Organising Secretary on the previous executive said that the make-up of the people on the LABA of which he’s head is one with persons with great a deal of experience in administrating the game so the course of development should be smooth.
“Having guys like Robby (Byass) and Zico (Hamid) … will make things easy for most of us because it means that we can put our thoughts together and come up with something that would benefit all parties and stakeholders,” Graham pointed out.
It’s the hope of the new LABA president that basketball in Linden can be family-oriented, hence the importance of youth tournaments.
“We need to work back to Under-13 and other levels up to Under-21 in the club structure apart from the schools so teams can be properly structured to make sure that these tournaments are properly governed. We want to see parents and families coming out to basketball again and we, the new LABA, will provide that platform,” the new LABA president pointed out.