ACTUALITE |
12.07.2005
Basketball : Fishing Tomorrow’s Stars
The second international camp to detect young talents took place in Yaounde last week.
The Kossengwe basketball camp was in its second edition last week at College Vogt, Yaounde. It brought together some 55 youths, 35 boys and 20 girls, from Cameroon and Tchad. The kidS, selected by a college of coaches of teams across the country, were drilled for four days by 15 coaches from Cameroon and Senegal. According to the main organizer, NBA Scout, Skills development coach and special trainer for NBA players, Joe Touomou, the objective was to share knowledge and experience acquired in the United States of America with local trainers and young players. The specificity this year was the admission of girls, education on fundamental skills in life and sensitization on HIV/AIDS, drugs and alcohol.
It was a memorable event for the young basketballers. For one thing, it gave them an opportunity to dream. Dream of becoming a professional basketball player someday. Focus was on fundamental skills on the basketball court. But the camp was above all, meant to spot the imbued talents in the kids, in a bid to determine those who can push on to become professionals someday. By this, Joe Touamou wants young people to know that through sports, they can continue their studies abroad and maybe, realize their dream of becoming professionals; just like him. Participants said that they had a great time and learned a lot from the camp. The kids from Tchad and the coach from Senegal were particularly thankful.
According to Joe Touomou, who has a penchant to promote basketball in the African continent and Cameroon in particular, everything went on well. "We are growing every year and the camp is getting international attention. The one thing I really liked about this year`s camp was the participation of girls. They impressed the staff with their intelligence and hard work. The improvement was obvious and I`m sure they went home with a lot in terms of their skills development", he said.
The former special trainer for NBA players has a lot of plans in the pipeline for the development of basketball. He intends to expand the camp to other provinces of Cameroon and other countries in Africa, talk more about democracy to campers, help young girls to protect themselves from various outside pressures, establish exchange programmes between campers and students in the US, allow coaches to travel abroad to learn more, help the federation to develop youth basketball…
The young coaches also learned a lot during their coaching clinics. It was a opportunity for these determined coaches to share and gain new coaching techniques from Joe Touomou and the National Technical Director, Mr. Mekongo.
Yesterday, the camp Director and his staff met to decide which kids would be selected for the next step of the project. The 14 kids retained would be informed in course of the week and will have to start preparing for admission procedures into American schools. To all of them, it will be a dream come true to study and play basketball in the United States of America; the land of basketballers.
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