Women's basketball head focusing on player development

CLAIRE Mitchell, president of the National Basketball Federation of TT (NBFTT), is putting her focus for 2021 on local player development.

Mitchell made this disclosure during an interview on Tuesday.

The NBFTT recently held a virtual launch of its inaugural TT Female Basketball League.

Mitchell said, “While we are in the planning stages, there are some things we have to do in order to make the league sustainable. One of the things is preparation.

“If you want the league to be by women, for women and of women, we have to start from the ground up, which is training women, female coaches (and) officials.

“We had the Minister of Education (Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly) at the launch, because primary schools and secondary schools are our main feeder pool. We would be having workshops, involving teachers to introduce the young ones, male and female, to the game. We’ll be doing a big push on development.

“Those are the small things that we can get (done) during the downtime, get people to focus on the technical aspects of the game, and the administrative aspect, so that when we return to play, we would be better prepared.”

Mitchell pointed out that the national men’s and women’s teams are back in training, after the Prime Minister, in November, gave the green light for TT sporting teams to resume preparation, once they adhere to covid19 protocols.

“We have been allowed to train because we would have had to supply certain protocols to the Sports Company that we would be observing,” she said. “Right now, FIBA (International Basketball Federation) has suspended all 5x5 tournaments. We keep planning, but always with the covid19 protocols in mind. We aim to go back out with 3x3, it’s a shorter version of the game.”

Concerning NBFTT’s accomplishments in 2020, Mitchell noted, “More than 50 coaches have been trained online through FIBA. We had two NBA virtual workshops for players and coaches.

“We’re doing a two-year strategic plan that would involve the ‘new normal.’ We should be sharing this with our stakeholders by mid-January so that they would know what the plans are.”