The Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation says that the national basketball team will be competing in this year’s Caribbean Basketball Championships (CBC) and co-founder of the Haynes Foundation, Paul Haynes believes that the team needs to begin training now in order to be competitive.
Speaking to Stabroek Sport Sunday evening, Haynes made it clear that he was no coach, but said from his point of view if Guyana is to pose a strong challenge at the championships, the players “need to start training now.
“When I say training, I mean training. I don’t mean running off a tournament and picking players. I think we have at least 30 players that are of Guyana national team calibre that we can earmark right now and we should take those players and start training them for competitive international basketball… I think they need to start training as of right now if they want to be competitive at CBC,” said Haynes.
The founders of the Haynes Foundation, Paul and Patrick Haynes have been deeply involved in basketball prior to and since the official birth of the foundation in 2007. They also began their philanthropy work by making donations towards the game in Guyana.
According to the foundation’s website (www.haynesunited.org), during a visit to Guyana in April 2006, Patrick and Paul Haynes met with former teammates and coaches while attending a basketball game at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall where they observed that the game of basketball and the Sports Hall had literally deteriorated.
This prompted the brothers to try to do something for the game and this led to the establishment of the Haynes Foundation, which is a registered nonprofit public charity of New Jersey, United States.
Haynes’ brother Patrick is currently serving as the Technical Assistant on the executive committee of the Caribbean Basketball Confederation, organizers of the CBC. Haynes bemoaned the current level of basketball in Guyana, stating that the game of basketball on the local scene “has been at a standstill for the past decade.
“We may have had some tournaments here and there, but we really haven’t scratched the surface on improving the sport.
“I think basketball needs restructuring from the top down and it begins with the administrators and the executives. We need to structure the game administratively before we even start running off a set of tournaments.”
Haynes noted that for the game to develop in Guyana there needs to be “productive and efficient administrators, officials, and record keepers.
“We don’t have that infrastructure in place… so I say right now the state is somewhat 10-15 years behind FIBA standards,” Haynes added.
