The NetBlazers Basketball Club continues to lead the charge in islandwide basketball development through their latest initiative: a two-day basketball coaching clinic held at the Vigie Sports Complex on October 11 and 12. This free opportunity allowed coaches to learn new techniques or refine existing ones through hands-on guidance and tactical insights.
The chief facilitator for the clinic was Gaelen Sydney of Titan Athletics, based in Toronto, Canada. Sydney, who played collegiate basketball in the United States, returned to Saint Lucia for the second time in three months to help elevate the nation’s basketball program.
“I thought that it would be a great opportunity to help better develop and certify coaches here to just get more programming and more foundation to basketball in Saint Lucia,” he told St. Lucia Times in an exclusive interview. “I intend to be able to certify the coaches with the ability to get youth off the streets and onto the court and make better programs where they’re getting better in basketball and up and developing the level of basketball in Saint Lucia and the Caribbean.”
He went on to highlight the coaches’ willingness to engage in meaningful conversations and expressed hope for lasting change.
“The coaches have been very receptive. They’ve definitely given me an insight to how basketball is currently in Saint Lucia and some issues and things that they want to work on, and they definitely have commented that this clinic has given them the tools to properly plan and prepare for future events in the island. My end goal is just to continue to build the program, continue to make trips and see how the development of basketball has been in the island of Saint Lucia, as well as the other islands and just help more enter island competition.”
The coaches themselves expressed gratitude for the training, noting that it could spark broader collaboration at the grassroots level. Take Hillian Gabriel, for example — a young coach at Micoud Secondary School — who found the clinic enlightening.
“I’m from the old culture where most of the time it’s emphasising a lot of drills and adhering to rigid exercises and these kinds of things,” he said. “But I’ve learned that a lot of these things no longer apply to the generation that we have here, that we have to implement a lot more games and have the players have more fun in what they are doing. Because if not, we’re not going to be moving up to the times.”
More experienced coaches, like Ansel Edole, head coach of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force Basketball Team, were equally impacted by the clinic’s content.
“The experience was eye-opening, first and foremost. You get to understand a lot of different coaching concepts as far as what we understand here in Saint Lucia. I acquired some fundamentals that I will be putting into practice with my team, and hopefully that we can improve most of the athletes that I have under my command right now.”
These sentiments were echoed by Garrick George, a coach with NetBlazers and the Entrepot Secondary School.
“Specifically, [we learnt about] making the game fun because realising that basketball is a game. So when kids come to train, you want to make the sessions fun, which will then make them want to always come back and get better all the time,” he said.
Organisers are confident that this is merely the beginning of deeper collaboration among coaches, as they work to elevate basketball culture on the island to the next level.
