Visiting basketball coach lauds females’ tenacity

The over 20 female basketballers who attended the three-day High School All Girls Basketball Camp, staged by the St Vincent and the Grenadines Basketball Federation, in conjunction with the Sunshine Basketball Academy, were lauded by Amanda Barksdale for their effort .

Barksdale, along with Vincentian-born WNBA player Sancho Lyttle, conducted the camp at the St Joseph’s Convent Kingstown.

“Everyone came out with that willingness to learn; they were all aggressive… they were not scared to make mistakes and they did not hesitate to learn from their mistakes… They were saying to themselves… I am just going to show up and do the best that I can…,” Barksdale opined.

Commenting on their physical attributes, Barksdale added, “You can’t coach height and already you have an advantage which is right there; girls are coming out and they are tall; a lot of coaches overseas are looking for girls who are tall and who are coachable.

“They have a foundation…. They look that they have been playing with someone and someone was training them, so they were able to pick up what we were trying to teach them, so they continuously practise; the more you do the repetition, it then becomes natural,” Barksdale observed.

And, with female basketball in St Vincent and the Grenadines still taking time to get form, Barksdale and Lyttle both agreed that the females used their knowledge of netball to make the transition to basketball.

Barksdale underlined that the females’ natural athletic talents would serve them in the movement towards full-fledged basketballers.

Meanwhile, Lyttle, who is a former St Vincent and the Grenadines Under-16 netball and track athlete, said she used her attributes from both disciplines to advance her basketball skills when she entered junior college in the USA, 17 years ago.

“If you do play netball, you are already in shape for basketball; you just need the skills for basketball,” Lyttle stated from her personal experiences.(RT)