The Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) officially launched its 2007/2008 basketball season yesterday at a press conference held at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
This start to the season will be well received by players and basketball fans alike, who have been energized by the Guyana U-19 basketball team’s stunning win in the just-concluded Inter-Guiana games competition combined with the fact that the NBA regular season is upon us.
Players will finally have the chance to return to the court come November 18, when the association commences both the Georgetown Super Eight Division One Knockout and the Open Third Division Knockout tournaments.
President of the GABA, Chris Bowman, highlighted the many changes that his association has made in an effort to improve its efficiency in the administration of the sport.
“As the key stake holders in the development of the game locally the association has created a bold new vision toward this new basketball season. We have extended the executive membership of the association as well as identified different avenues through which we can seek to improve on our organization’s shortcomings,” said Bowman.
One such flaw that Bowman pointed out in his organization, was its inability to generate revenue, and to remedy this problem The GABA has collaborated with the Next Level Entertainment group.
This collaboration between GABA and the Next Level Entertainment group will last for the duration of the season with GABA being the major stake holder.
A representative of the Next Level entertainment Group, Travis Shepherd, said yesterday that the group planned to employ some exciting and innovative ideas for this new season to produce same the ‘heart pumping’ game atmosphere , trademarked to the NLE .
Meanwhile, the GABA has appointed Reyad Boyce as the second vice-president, whose main responsibility will be to generate income for the association to finance their upcoming development initiatives.
Stabroek Sport was also informed that the GABA will be involved in special development programmes for the 25 male and female eligible prospects for the Inter- Guiana Games Basketball 2008 competition.
This programme will start as early as January and run until the competition so that Guyana can retain their male basketball title and improve on the performance of the females. This progamme will be fully financed by the National Spots Commission (NSC).
The NSC is also in the process of completing the formalities to allow all the affiliated clubs of the GABA, access to the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall to conduct some of their regular practice sessions.
As opening night for the season draws near, the GABA executive committee reported that they have had good responses from teams so far since the majority of teams have already registered and completed the affiliation process for the 2007/2008 season. Teams in these tournaments will be seeded based on the performance in the super league tournament which concluded earlier this year.
