Ball'In Schools get rolling anew in Sri Lanka

BEIRUT (Lebanon) - The FIBA Regional Office-Asia began the Ball'In Schools initiative rolling this 2024 following a successful staging in Colombo, Sri Lanka recently.

Made possible in cooperation with the Sri Lanka Basketball Federation, the program was held in the city of Colombo last January 24-27 and was attended by 26 participants.

One of the attendees in Isuru Amarasinghe expressed appreciation to how the entire course furthered widened their knowledge about grassroots basketball.

“It was very fruitful and interesting 4 days. We learned a lot of new areas, and it helped us to broaden our vision on the game of basketball and coaching," he stated.

A major takeaway for the other participants was the organization of grassroots events locally that could help spur the interest of younger generations in the game of basketball.

"Event organizing is another area which is very useful and the program made it very simple to understand how and when to do the right things," said Duke.

"It was a great program which basically covered how to keep the young kids involved in the game with exciting activities," he furthered.

Founded by the FIBA Regional Office-Asia, Ball'In Schools is a grassroots development project aiming to help plant the seeds of love for the game at a young age, especially in schools.

It addresses the current and common challenges that slow down the development of basketball, such as insufficient presence of the sport in schools; the absence of age-group competitions, or the low quality of basketball infrastructure and limited accessibility.

Ball'In Schools does so by empowering local ambassadors with a program to push for basketball in schools. These programs are trained by select experts, where the ambassadors use what they have learned and then take the initiative further to introduce or raise awareness.

FIBA