The Ghana Basketball Association (GBBA) in collaboration with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) over the weekend held a day’s clinic for over 200 young girls drawn from various Junior and Senior High Schools as well as basketball clubs.
Held at the University of Ghana Basketball Court in Legonunder the theme “her world, her rules,” the clinic and basic life support training programme, fully funded by FIBA, brought girls between the ages of 6 to 15 years from institutions such as Aburi Girls Senior High School, Chiefs Academy (Kumasi), St. Joseph’s CYO and University of Ghana.
The rest were Dunk Grassroots, Cedar Oak Basketball Academy, Basketball Unite Academy, Basketball School Academy (BSA), Eagles Basketball Academy (Koforidua) and Hoops Care (Cape Coast).
The girls were introduced to the fundamentals of the game like stretch and warm-up exercises, free throws, shooting, dribbling and passing drills among others.
Also, officials from the International Sickle Cell Centre, Ghana Anesthetists Association, (BC Medicals, RegEmp, and Operation Smile Ghana took turns to sensitise participants and parents who were on hand to support their kids about how to provide emergency life support on the court.
Speaking to the Times Sports after the event, Project Leader Madam Aurora Commodore-Toppar said one of the many desires of the new administration was to introduce the sport to girls from the basic and secondary school level to whip up excitement and interest in them.
“The interest of the sport among the girls child has dwindled in recent times and to bring back the love for the sport, we decided to assess this FIBA sponsored programme which is in line with our goal of making the sport accessible to all girls living in every corner of the country.”
She stated that the clinic will be a yearly affair which could be rotated around the country to give equal opportunities to girls in other regions.
The GBBA, she revealed, was keen on helping Ghana meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 which concerns gender equality and SDG 3 which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all.
Madam Commodore-Toppar was full of praise for the Gender Committee members DrYayraKluboito and Nana AkosuaSerwaa as well as the Association’s Secretary General Rafiq Arthur for putting in the application at FIBA for the programme.
President of GBBA, Mr. Ato Van-Ess thanked all the invited institutions for honouring their request and assured that his outfit would access more initiatives to inure to the benefit of Ghana basketball.
BY RAYMOND ACKUMEY
