The island of Dominica recovers through basketball

SAINT JOSEPH — More than a year has passed since Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean, and the island of Dominica and the Dominica Amateur Basketball Association try to go back to normal by reestablishing sports activities.

The efforts began creating a new basketball league: the Kelver Darroux Basketball League, whose name honors the Minister of Information, Science, Telecommunications and Technology of Dominica.

They also relaunched the former Business Basketball League. An amateur basketball league made of 11 private enterprise and local businesses teams, that lasted from the month of September until January.

The Ministry of Sports also started to rehabilitate and build a ceiling for the sports complex of the Massacre sector, with an investment of $700,000 dollars. The project had been in plans since 2016, but several hurricanes and tropical storms caused its delay.

Even the 3x3 discipline started to do its rounds again, with the celebration of a national U-18 tournament where nearly 30 young people born between 2000 and 2002 participated.

“Sports, I believe, continues to play an integral role in the lives of our young people,” said Mr. Darroux to a local newspaper when it was announced that the tournament would be named after him. “Since the hurricane, as the Member of Parliament for the St. Joseph Constituency, I have taken it as a personal responsibility to see sports being revived, not just in my constituency, but for the country. And also, being a basketball player myself, and having a keen interest in the sport, along with a committee that I put in place, we decided to organize a basketball league in the community of St. Joseph that will be on a national scale. The league I believe will provide an opportunity for our young people, particularly our young men, to continue to show and exhibit their energies in a positive way as well as to continue to have the sport of basketball alive and kicking in the country,” he noted.

At a school level, Dominica also reinitiated their activities in the Secondary Schools Tournament, where there was participation of seven men’s teams and four women’s teams. The tournament is organized by the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Culture and Constituency Empowerment.

The last time that the Dominica national team saw action in a FIBA official competition was in 2016, when they played in the Caribbean Basketball Championship with their U-16 team, ending in the tenth position.

FIBA