Byo basketball in the dark

Sport
THERE is a dark cloud hovering above the Bulawayo Basketball Association (BBA) and clubs.

THERE is a dark cloud hovering above the Bulawayo Basketball Association (BBA) and clubs. The sport is not showing any signs of growth and popularity due to a number of factors, the most obvious one being the lack of financial backing from the corporate world.

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BBA can hardly be blamed for the crumbling of the sport as the association’s efforts to breathe life into basketball are clear to everyone who follows the sport. Despite all the challenges that are going to be mentioned herein, the association managed to select from their “unbranded” league junior and senior teams to represent the province in the Inter-provincial tournament a fortnight ago.

The teams did very well. The women’s senior team beat Harare for the first time in six years to win gold while the men’s team missed gold by inches narrowly losing to a well-oiled Harare team in the dying stages of the match.

Despite the potential that the province has to take the sport to greater heights, the provincial league has already suffered a blow. Since the league started three teams — Unicorns, Stars and ALLC — have made a premature exit in the men’s section while Giants and Oilers pulled out of the women’s league.

Southern Eye caught up with some basketball experts and clubs to find out what are the major challenges affecting basketball as a sporting discipline and what ought to be done to save the sport from dying a natural death and they pointed out a number of factors.

BBA secretary-general Howard Phangwana pointed out a number of challenges bedevilling basketball in the province.

“The first and far most blow within our league is that clubs do not have financial stability. They do not have financial support, as a result some clubs crumble during the course of the season. As BBA, we have tried to be lenient with those who cannot afford to pay affiliation fees, but it goes back to haunt the association because there is no money to do other duties we should be conducting. We have been trying to look for funding, but our efforts are always fruitless because in Bulawayo the industry is not doing well so it is difficult to have a sponsor,” Phangwana said.

He said schools should work with the provincial basketball associations as stipulated by the Basketball Union of Zimbabwe so that better teams could be produced in future.

Former national team player, now Kings chairman Daniel Mombeshora and former BBA secretary-general Joe Mujuru, echoed the same sentiments saying the reason why clubs do not get funding is that they do not have proper structures.

They said clubs should go back to the drawing board and build proper structures that will see them attracting people responsible for marketing their clubs so that they could create relations with the corporate world.