Gilmore Williams: ''The focus of the Montserrat Basketball Association is to develop from the youth up''

With 5,200 inhabitants and lacking a National Olympic Committee and the economic structure that could contribute to the development of the sport, the Montserrat Amateur Basketball Association (MABA) continues to work thoroughly in its formation focusing on the U-21 category and on development of their local league.

They recently concluded the national tournament, where 60 young athletes younger than 21 had the opportunity to be active regardless of their skills level or experience. This competition is the only one available for this group in the island, which is why the Association does everything in their hands to keep it afloat.

The idea behind the U-21 Tournament is that sometimes the young players that are constantly left out of their school’s team could experience the game as well. This effort is focused not only on players with good skills, but also in those that portray an adequate sportsmanship attitude.

“They can't be in their school’s team because they just choose 15 and those are the best 15. So, in terms of developing the sport, we decided that we would have a youth tournament with, not only the 15 who made the group, but also with the other 15 who love the sport as well,” explained the Association’s president, Gilmore Williams.

“They love this. They're not playing against the senior team, they're playing among their mates (of the same age) and now they can showcase their abilities,” Williams added.

Basketball is also fighting to be the number one popular sport in the island, a spot that is currently occupied by cricket, a sport that for this reason has a much larger budget contributed by the government, which allows them to travel more frequently to international competitions.

“I need to expose my players more, because cricket travels to different tournaments, and my young basketball players feel forgotten,” said Williams to FIBA.com. “I want to attend more tournaments, but the lack of funding because we don’t have a National Olympic Committee makes it very difficult to save funds to attend. Our youth national team is waiting for the next opportunity for the association to be able to cover the costs of their participation.”

Because of this MABA is focusing their limited resources toward local and school initiatives through their Youth Development Programme, which visits schools twice a week to practice and teach the sport. This process works as a mechanism to later identify and chose the players for the national teams.

“The focus of the Montserrat Basketball Association is to develop from the youth up. We must keep this tournament running and we’re going to keep it afloat,” assured Williams.

The Montserrat senior national team participated most recently in the FIBA zone competitions in 2018, at the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 Caribbean Pre-Qualifiers, where they ended in seventh place.

FIBA