FIBA (International Basketball Federation) regional tournaments will get underway in less than a month, and The Bahamas' under-17 girls national basketball team has officially started its preparations. The team will head to Mexico City, Mexico for the 2015 Centrobasket Under-17 Championships for Women, which gets underway on July 14 and will feature some of the top junior players from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean region.
Head coach of this year's club, Varel Davis, said that this particular team is going to have to play an up-tempo style of basketball to be competitive. She said this primarily because of the number of guards on the roster. She said that a lack of size could work as both an advantage and a hindrance, and that this club will have to be well-conditioned and fundamentally sound in order to compete with some of the other teams in the tournament.
"Our sessions are going well so far," she said. "I'm focused on fundamentals and conditioning because we have a lot of shorter players on the roster. We're lacking in the post... We're still trying to find players in that area."
Davis said that she will be traveling to some of the Family Islands over the next few weeks to try and find some taller players to help out in the paint.
"Next weekend I'm heading to Abaco. There are some talented girls there, and the following week, one of our coaches will be in Harbour Island," she said. "We're trying to combine a team with players from various islands to see what we have."
Despite the fact that the sessions have been going well up to this point, Davis feels that there could be more support given to the various national teams in terms of facilities. She feels that the local teams could be even more productive if given a stable practice facility.
"One time ago I was a player, and since then, it seems like nothing has hardly changed," she said. "Sometimes we're outdoors, and you still have to find facilities to play on. It's been very hard because some days we're at St. Augustine's College and others we're outside in the back of the Kendal G.L Isaacs National Gymnasium. These girls really need a gym to play in, because when we go to Mexico, it's really going to be hard without practicing in a gym."
Centrobasket is a FIBA-sponsored international basketball tournament where national teams from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean participate. These countries make up the Central American and Caribbean Confederation (CONCENCABA). The top three or four teams typically earn berths to the FIBA Americas Championship, from which they can qualify for the FIBA global tournaments.
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
