Schools clash in Nash tourney

The tournament was launched last year by the National Secondary Schools Heads with the support of the Basketball Association of Zimbabwe.
Nash has over the years staged national tournaments for the Under-16 in an effort to develop young players and the Under-14 tournament comes as a boost to their development programme.

The two-day event is expected to feature 24 teams from various schools across the country’s 10 provinces.
Basketball Union of Zimbabwe competitions director, Simon Lawson, said the tournament is a developmental programme to nurture talent from an early age.
“For a stronger national team you have to start at grassroots and we are saying there was a huge gap between Naph (National Association of Primary Schools Heads) and the Under-16.

“We need the competition for national level starting at Naph with the youngsters starting to get national exposure at various levels so that we get the best players and that’s the main reason we initiated this tournament.
“If resources permit we want to get to the Under-11.

“Each province is expected to field a boys and a girls team, however, we are going to have 24 teams in total because now we have invited the defending champions and the hosting school so it becomes 12 teams in each category,” said Lawson.
Lawson said the tournament will enable them to track down the talented players identified during the event.

All participants were expected in Kadoma by yesterday for the technical meeting with the games set to take off this morning. Mashonaland Central are the defending champions in the boys section and Harare are the title holders in the girls category.
Some of the Schools expected to compete are Highfield High, Girls High, Mufakose 2 High, Chikanga High, Kriste Mambo, Goromonzi, St Eric, Mazowe High, Mosi-oa-

Tunya, St Patricks, Embakwe, Dewure, Gokomere, Nkulumane and Chikanga High.
Meanwhile Hoops 4 Hope will take advantage of the Harare Basketball Association’s off season and stage a community basketball festival in eight communities over the period of eight weekends as the organisation hunts for more basketball talent that lie untapped in Harare and surrounding communities. The event will run from tomorrow until August 19 in rotating venues.