Lo­cal bas­ket­ball clubs Spar­tans TT, New Chap­ter Acad­e­my, Roy­al­ty Bas­ket­ball, Mal­oney Pac­ers Bas­ket­ball and Youth De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, Matthew Pierre Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, Hoop Na­tion Acad­e­my, En­ter­prise Bas­ket­ball, POS Trail­blaz­ers, De­tour Shak At­tack, Fa­ti­ma Tigers and Elite Ea­gles Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my will fea­ture in the fourth edi­tion of the Bas­ket­ball Fi­es­ta which bounces off to­day from 8 am.

The youth bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment themed “Where Cul­ture Meets Bas­ket­ball” will take place at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty in Port-of-Spain and run un­til 8 pm on Sun­day evening with the prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

 Some 42 teams from the 11 clubs will par­tic­i­pate in four days of ac­tion at the Bas­ket­ball Fi­es­ta, which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled from Ju­ly 15-17 but was de­layed due to the lack of avail­able fa­cil­i­ties.

Fi­es­ta’s di­rec­tor Garvin War­wick said, “We are ex­cit­ed to get this event off and run­ning af­ter a 2-year halt due to COVID-19. Clubs, Coach­es, play­ers and fans alike are all ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed about the re­sump­tion of Bas­ket­ball Fi­es­ta. As a com­mit­tee, we are al­so ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed to restart our ac­tiv­i­ties af­ter this two-year void.”

There will be ac­tion in nine cat­e­gories in­clud­ing Un­der-10, U-12, U-14 Boys, U-14 Girls, U-16 Boys, U-16 Girls, U-18 Boys, U-18 Girls and U-20 Boys in the youth com­pe­ti­tion sup­port­ed by the main spon­sor Re­pub­lic Bank along with  MI­LO, Dig­i­cel and Domi­no's.

 Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­is­ers, the tour­na­ment pro­vides an av­enue for youth bas­ket­ball, not on­ly in Trinidad but the wider Caribbean which will see more than 200 young as­pir­ing bas­ket­ball play­ers be­tween the ages of 8 to 20 com­ing to­geth­er to play. This is a mod­el adapt­ed from the USA which is done on a cir­cuit ba­sis and played in dif­fer­ent states.

They added that the fo­cus of Fi­es­ta Bas­ket­ball con­tin­ues to be the de­vel­op­ment of youth bas­ket­ball and all el­e­ments that make up the game in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of young as­pir­ing ref­er­ees and of­fi­cials in T&T and the wider Caribbean.

En­trance is free to all.