Tarawa (Kiribati) - The Kiribati Basketball Federation (KBF) relaunched their Highschool basketball tournament after a 10-year absence.

The inter-school competition featured nine schools in a monumental opening day of games last May 16 at the Betio Sports Complex in Tarawa.

"In the past years, we used to have competitions among the schools in soccer, volleyball, and basketball besides the usual track and field events of the interschool sport. It has been a while and we are happy to be back!" said Kiribati Basketball Federation President, Lailai Tak Fai.

Tak Fai explained the positive impact sports can give to their youth and hopes that more students will be active in participating in the tournament which will run until June.

"We wanted to reach the students to give at-risk youth life-changing opportunities to a better living lifestyle and to encourage them to participate more," she explained. "We also want to further their skills and knowledge for games which leans towards full interest in a way that they can be very skilled." 

KBF partnered with Land & Marine Transport Agents (LMTA) to organize the tournament and acknowledged their support in promoting the competition on the island.

"Our sponsor recognizes the importance of sports to the youth and we are grateful to LMTA of their support and through their social media and also local tv for covering the games," Tak Fai said.

Tak Fai also explained that the competition will have a grand final in June, which will also help prepare the federation for another tournament in July to celebrate Kiribati's independence.

"The Interschool Basketball Tournament is done for several weeks only Saturdays as they are all students and we are at a disadvantage of not having enough facilities here in Kiribati. So we are doing the league first then we will target the end of June to have the Grand Final," Tak Fai said.

"Not only that but there is another main tournament for the Kiribati Independence in July where all sports are starting to have their opening early this month to target the finals during the ceremony," she added.

 FIBA