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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
SIXTEEN teams will compete in an Independence Day drugs and substance abuse basketball tournament to be held at Bulawayo’s ceremonial home of the sport, Khanyisile Sports Centre in North End on April 18.
Bulawayo Basketball Association are organising the tournament that will have ballers between the ages of 16 to 20 years competing in boys’ and girls’ categories.
Former national junior teams’ coach Sikhumbuzo “SV” Ndlovu, a member of the organising committee said clubs have been drawn across the city, adding that besides tackling drugs and substance abuse topics, participants will get to learn about the importance of Independence Day.
The 10 boys’ teams that will compete in the tournament to celebrate Zimbabwe’s 43 years of self-rule are Lakers Supermed based in North End, Lakers Sneaker Hub based in the city centre, Lobengula’s Highlanders, Titan of Selborne Park, Southern Mavericks Nkulumane, Clippers (city centre), City Royal of Famona, Cyrene High School’s Comets and Riverdale Academy from Hillside.
Laker Glen Lodge (city centre), Highlanders (Lobengula), Southern Mavericks Nkulumane, Angels who are based on the eastern side of the city and Famona’s City Royals will compete in the girls’ category.
Ndlovu said the competition will be played in shorter times instead of the normal game with focus being on awareness.
“Bulawayo Basketball Association has decided to bring great awareness to our youths. The youths we’re talking about here are the Under-20s, those between 16 and 20 years for this Independence Day tournament.
“We’ll have sessions with specialists, people who will bring about drug and substance abuse and even sexuality.
We’re realising that there’s a lot of prevalent cases of our youths and youngsters indulging in some of those vices. As for basketball, we’ve decided to host a tournament that is going to bring awareness to them, to really talk to youths in a small-based group, telling them about the dangers that they face when they indulge in drugs and substance abuse and even illicit stuff and even sexuality.
“We need to be a society that is open, a society that really reaches and talks to youngsters.
We’ve always said a lot of stuff about ama2000 but we’re not doing much about them.
We want to say as basketball we don’t condone drug use as a sport. We want basketball to be a family event, we want people to come and be free. We want the parents to have confidence in the sport, we want the corporate world to understand that we’re doing an effort to clean the sport and the youth, therefore we’ve put aside this day.
“We also want youngsters to understand that 18 April in the history of Zimbabwe is quite a relevant day that they need to celebrate,” said Ndlovu.
The draw for the competition will be held tomorrow. – @ZililoR.
Online Reporter