St. Kitts & Nevis; first comes structure and development, then competition

BASSETERRE (St. Kitts) - The St. Kitts Amateur Basketball Association (SKANABA) has declared a halt to its aspirations in regional and international competitions to focus on reestablishing its administrative structure and develop its base talents.

These changes arrive with the unanimous appointment of Glen Jeffers in February 2018 as president of the organization. The President arrived at his position with the mission of reorganizing the Federation’s administration, improving its media presence, stabilizing its financial matters, and developing the sport in the islands.

“This year we've said to all our clubs that the focus is on the youth and the two camps we have for them this summer,” explained Jeffers to FIBA.basketball. “For the seniors we're currently in the middle of our league, which began on March 17 and will end in July. We have 10 teams in our Premier Division and 8 teams in our Division A.”

According to official FIBA archives, the senior national men's team of SKANABA hasn't participated in an official event since the CBC Championship in 2006. Jeffers acknowledges that they're still not at the level they wish to be in order to compete, which is why he prefers to reestablish the administrative structure before participating in events out of the country.

“Right now, we're not looking for our senior teams to participate in any regional or international competition. I arrived at the position a year ago amidst several financial challenges. We're back with our sponsors. Everything is running much better now, and we expect to be back in 2020 to regional competitions,” said Jeffers.

St. Kitts and Nevis are also in the final part of preparing the five players that will participate in the U-17 Regional CBC Camp in Puerto Rico in July and aim to go to the FIBA Global Camp after this year ends.

This group also recently ended their participation in the junior category of the youth tournament, which lasted from February to April and that featured seven young teams of the ages of 13 to 19. Likewise, during their spring break, a successful 3x3 tournament took place in the island.

“[I'm focused] on giving structure to the sport. A structure in terms of administration and organization. We were lagging in that aspect. We were developing with no sponsors. They came back this year, so with that in place and with some assistance by the Olympic Committee we continue our development.”

Next in schedule for the Federation are several youth camps that will take place in July and August in collaboration with the Ministry of Sports. The focus is to gain attention again for this sector, give exposition and grant them scholarships for them to study and play overseas.

“We have a lot of players right now that are going nowhere. They're not in school and they play just for fun. Now we must refocus them so that the attend the camps. In a moment in time we had 20 players overseas; now we have none. So, we must go to these 16 and 19-year-old players and help them, develop them and make Division 1, 2 and 3 schools pick them,” Jeffers concluded.

The islands of St. Kitts and Nevis have an estimated population of 55,000 inhabitants, and their federation became a FIBA affiliate in 1979.

FIBA