Basketball training camps on mainland

The Adonal Foyle Island Basketball Camp tour will extend to include young basketballers on mainland St. Vincent in 2007.

Foyle, this country’s first NBA basketballer and initiator of the camp, said that the mainland is on his agenda for next year.{{more}}

At the closing of the 2006 programme last week Friday in Bequia, the third and final stop of the camp on the Grenadines’ calendar, Foyle explained that he and his team of coaches are in a better position to expand the outreach.

“We have gained the experience now, so that next year we can handle St. Vincent; we know the number of kids we can deal with effectively and spread the camp out over few days,” Foyle projected.

He said that the Grenadines was used as a launch pad for the greater island-wide event.

Foyle foresees future camps to be more high-profiled as he will be able to attract more sponsorship and get the services of more retired NBA players.

“We are looking forward to a lot of good things next year. We can take back the message and next year reach out to more NBA players so they know what they are getting into, as it is fun and the kids will love it,” said Foyle, the No.8 pick overall for the NBA draft in 1997.

This year’s camp, the second staged by Foyle, tipped off on July 31 in his home island of Canouan, then moved to Union Island on August 2, and Bequia on August 4. It involved close to 450 young basketballers between the age of 6 and 16.

The participants were exposed to a full complement of personnel, which included basketball coaches, athletics trainers, strengthening and conditioning coaches, a nutritionist, doctors and a nurse.

The 31-year-old 6ft 10-inch Foyle, who is in his tenth season with the Golden State Warriors, emphasised the importance of including a literacy component of the camp.

He implored the young participants to grab an education, as he has seen many NBA players before him earn a lot of money but were robbed of it because of their inability to comprehend and reason.

Foyle described the 2006 programme as “amazing”.

He measured the success on the turn-out of the females.

“When I tried this camp in Canouan almost three years ago, we had two females. This year 50 percent of the persons on the camp were females,” he observed.

He believed that the heightened interest by the females had to do with the success of Sancho Lyttle and Sophia Young, the two Vincentians playing in the WNBA.

Participants in one-day camps were provided with lunch, refreshments, T-shirts, all-weather shoes, armbands, basketballs, notepads, literature on HIV/AIDS and other pertinent basketball paraphernalia.

Foyle revealed that the 2006 camp costs in the neighbourhood of US $30,000.