Scores of excited primary school kids braved the rains on Friday to learn basic basketball skills as part of the first-ever Net Blazers Basketball Festival. The event saw close to 100 children from seven schools between Bexon and Gros Islet working with coaches and current and former national players at the Vigie Multipurpose Sports Complex.
The festival marked a significant milestone in the club’s Bringing Buckets Home pilot programme, which is based in primary schools across the northern district of Saint Lucia. The initiative, spearheaded by former national athlete and Net Blazers member Petal Brown, focuses on developing basketball skills and fostering positive values among young students at schools islandwide.
“And really the scope of it is to start kids from a younger age into the sport of basketball,” said Nikaela Khodra, public relations officer of Net Blazers. “So that when they do get to that higher age gap, they’re able to perform at a better standard and hopefully go on for national teams. Trying to bridge that gap that we saw before and that’s really the goal of today. So a fun-filled day of activities.”
“We have the programme going on, so it’s a pilot programme with the goal of expanding even into the south. So already we’re here to see what works, what doesn’t work, and how we can better it to expand into more schools as we move forward,” he added.
The festival is the latest move by Net Blazers to help grow the game locally, especially for girls. The school sports programme is adding secondary school girls basketball for the first time this year. Over the years, even without a girls’ programme, the sport has seen more than a dozen young women gaining scholarships to colleges and universities in the USA. Several have gone on to play and coach professionally.
“There is massive potential,” Khodra insisted. “Right now we have one of our very own Kerry-Ann Lewis, who’s on scholarship. She came out through the Net Blazers basketball club, something we’re very proud of. There is a massive potential. Before we were told that there are not enough women who play basketball, and the club really started to show people that this is able to happen. We ended up with 30-plus, almost 40 girls coming out to our very first summer camp.
“And those things just turned into us creating that club and continuing, broadening out into more secondary schools, getting more girls on board. We eventually had an A team, and a B team, and we had more senior and advanced players and new players coming in.
“So right now we’re trying to focus on the younger level, get them started from the younger level, from the grassroots level. So we can have an even stronger team by the time they’re of the age to make national teams and so on,” Khodra added.
Despite regular showers throughout the day, coaches, parents, and physical education teachers hailed the festival as a resounding success. Approximately 100 boys and girls turned out, learning and demonstrating skills including catching, dribbling, shooting, and passing. The children virtually had to be dragged off the court when the rains came.
The programme is supported by the Saint Lucia Basketball Federation and the Government of Saint Lucia through the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports. The organisers are adamant that interventions such as the primary school programme and the festival series are crucial to helping the sport advance.